Lakeside Apartments District, Oakland, California

Lakeside Apartments District
All Nighter Routes 800, 801, 802, 805, 840, 851
BART Stations	12th Street Oakland City Center, Lake Merritt, 19th Street Oakland
BART Lines

The Lakeside Apartments District neighborhood, also known as The Gold Coast, and simply as The Lakeside, is one of Oakland's historic residential neighborhoods between the Downtown district and Lake Merritt. In the context of a Cultural Heritage Survey, the City of Oakland officially named most of the blocks of the neighborhood "The Lakeside Apartments District," and designated it as a local historic district with architecturally significant historic places,^[1] and Areas of Primary Importance (APIs). The greater neighborhood includes the interior blocks officially designated as a local historic district and the 'Gold Coast' peripheral areas along Lakeside Drive, 20th Street, and the west edge of Lake Merritt, areas closer to 14th Street and the Civic Center district, and blocks adjacent to downtown along Harrison Street.

The district is characterized by a predominance of

The neighborhood was built on what was originally an encinal or

After gold was discovered in 1848 in present-day Coloma 125 miles (201 km) to the northeast, Anglo squatters led by lawyer

Before Oakland was even incorporated by the State legislature, by 1850, a trio of three ambitious men, to include Carpentier, had leased land from one of Luis' sons, Vincente Peralta. They hired a Swiss engineer, Julius Kellsburger, to prepare a street grid map. They began selling lots, whether through a good faith belief that US sovereignty superseded Mexican claims, or through deliberate fraud perpetrated on Peralta.^[3]

The street grid of Kellsburger's map starts at the Oakland Estuary waterfront, and ends at 14th street, the neighborhood's Southeast boundary. The current streets of the neighborhood show up on E.M. Sessions' 1869 map of Oakland, with long sweeping blocks north of 14th Street. That same year, the western terminus of the transcontinental railroad at Seventh and Broadway brought passengers from New York that had been confined to a train for a week, eager for the comforts and amenities of a city. By this time, horse-drawn streetcars brought passengers up Broadway to 14th Street and points beyond. By the 1890s, the neighborhood had become home to large homes on the lake and interior streets.

By the 1920s, apartment buildings and luxury hotels began to sprout up within walking distance from nearby

The district has an outstanding concentration of club buildings, historic luxury apartments, and a significant cluster of Deco structures,[6] including the terra cotta Charles Jurgens Co. building, the Elks Hall on Alice Street (now the Malonga Casquelord Arts Center), the Hill Castle Apartments on Jackson Street, The Hotel Harrison on Harrison Street, the Scottish Rite Center at the lake's edge on Lakeside Drive, the Alameda County Courthouse in the neighboring Civic Center district, which also features the Civic Center Post Office on 13th Street. The "Ideal Cleaners" shop features a neon sign and period appointments in the Art Deco style. Many of these historic buildings are protected as official city landmarks.^[7][8] During a city Cultural Heritage Survey in the 1980s most of the district was designated as featuring historically significant architectural resources. The Survey was conducted by the city of Oakland's Planning Department and its Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board from 1980 to 1985.^[1] Other historic places include the Victorian Camron-Stanford house on the shore of Lake Merritt at 14th Street and Lakeside Drive, the Municipal Boathouse on Lakeside Drive, the Greek revival Scottish Rite Center on Lakeside Drive, the eleven story Bechtel Building at 244 Lakeside, the Alician apartments on Alice Street with its ornate marble entrance, the Regillus condominiums on 19th street, the mission revival Scottish Rite Temple on Madison Street, and the historic Schilling Gardens on 19th Street.

One of the least likely structures to be overlooked—easily visible from a few blocks south of the neighborhood looking up Madison Street, is Tudor Hall. Its distinct architecture resembles the namesake period of the late 15th-early 17th centuries.

The district also features other historic assets in several three- to eight-story apartment buildings, this height being a character-defining feature of most of the historic district. Some exceptions to this character punctuate the neighborhood, to include Noble Tower on Lakeside Drive, and the Essex Condominiums at 17th and Lakeside, completed in 2001.

The district is adjacent to Lakeside Park, which lies to the east and northeast of the district. Lakeside Park is a public city park ring and green space surrounding Lake Merritt and is often called the Crown Jewel of Oakland's parks.^[9] Lakeside park is historically significant as featuring North America's first official wildlife refuge, designated in 1870. The state legislature voted the Lake Merritt Wildlife Refuge into law in 1870, making it the first such refuge on the North American continent. No hunting of any sort was to be allowed and the only fishing was to be by hook and line.^[10][11] Under the name Lake Merritt Wild Duck Refuge, the site became a National Historic Landmark on May 23, 1963.^[12][13] It also features a garden center with several cultivated gardens, and the Municipal Boat House on Lakeside Drive. A large restaurant has opened in the Boat House building, which has undergone extensive renovations, and was re-dedicated by city staff in 2009 in anticipation of its re-opening.

The neighborhood also features the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts on Alice Street, a public community asset owned and administered by the City of Oakland and its Department of Parks and Recreation.^[14] Formerly known as the Alice Arts Center, this building was renamed^[15] in 2004 in honor of Malonga Casquelourd, a Congolese dancer, choreographer, singer, percussionist, and cultural ambassador of the arts who was killed in 2003 by a drunk driver traveling in the wrong direction on a blind curve on Lakeside Drive in front of the Essex condominium building.^[16] The Alice Arts Center was opened in 1987 under then-Mayor Lionel Wilson. It has a 400-seat theater and fine arts and dance studios where numerous dancers, percussionists, and other musicians study and create music and visual arts. It has become a vibrant center for dance and music, particularly African- and African-American-influenced dance forms from Congolese, Guinean^[17] and Afro-Brazilian to jazz and hip-hop. City officials estimate that the center serves 50,000 people a year through classes and performances.^[18] The Oakland Ballet has had offices and rehearsals at the center.^[19]

The building also features 74

The building also features a prominent ground floor retail space adjacent to its main entrance. Over the years the space was the home to a cafe with poetry readings.

The neighborhood is also walking distance to the Main Branch of the Oakland Public Library on 14th Street between Madison and Oak Street.

The Oakland Museum of California is located at 11th and Oak Streets in the neighboring Civic Center district.

The district is also adjacent to Oakland's Snow Park a 4.2-acre (17,000 m²),^[24] public city park bordered by 19th Street, the Schilling Gardens Parcel, Harrison Street and Lakeside Drive. Snow Park, which is named after Oakland resident Henry Snow, was once the site of the first Oakland Zoo, the Sidney Snow Zoo, named after Henry Snow's son, which opened in 1943.^[25] It currently features public restroom facilities, sitting benches, mature shade trees, a grassy, sunlit meadow, and a golf putting green, which many neighborhood and citywide residents, and nearby office workers enjoy.

Residents of the neighborhood are zoned to schools in the

Laney College is a public community college located at the south end of the Civic Center neighborhood. Cal State East Bay has the Oakland Professional Development and Conference Center at Broadway and 11th Street. Continuing education courses are offered.

The neighborhood is located between Lake Merritt and Downtown Oakland. In recent years, market-rate housing developers have proposed constructing a variety of residential and residential mixed-use buildings which have been proposed to be anywhere from five to forty-two stories high. Neighborhood residents have voiced their concerns and objections to various proposed developments. Others have pressed developers to include meaningful

(a.k.a. "222 19th Street"/"19th Street Residential Condominiums Project") In 2005, a group of land speculators purchased a historic 1920s luxury apartment building at 244 Lakeside Drive on Lake Merritt. The Greenfield land behind the building features the historic Schilling Gardens. The Shilling Gardens is the last remaining portion of a cultivated Japanese garden originally planted in 1886 behind spice magnate August Schilling's Victorian mansion once located on the West shore of Lake Merritt. Today the garden features a shaded grove of several mature Coast Redwood trees, ferns, a sunny lawn area, and hundreds of other cultivated plants laid out into a multi-tiered, brick masonry landscape design, with artistic concrete floral canopy arbors and walking paths. The garden as a whole is considered by the City of Oakland's Register of Historical Resources, and Oakland's Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board, to be a landmark "of highest importance."^[31] After purchasing the parcel, the owners divided the parcel into two pieces, one along Lakeside Drive featuring the apartment building, and another parcel behind the building featuring the gardens. The owners then sought to donate the gardens parcel to the City of Oakland in exchange for

Subsequently, the negotiations fell apart and Oakland's office of Parks and Recreation Director said she didn't bring the decision before the Oakland City Council because she thought that the department dealing with the owner, Oakland's CEDA Real Estate Services Division, was doing that.[31] The director of Oakland Community and Economic Development Agency, Real Estate Services Division denied any responsibility for the missed opportunity. He said he was presented with "budget restraints" and that, in any case, his role was limited to providing "real estate-related expertise.".^{[31] [32]}

In 2006, the owners, two

Since 2006, the owners have assembled a real estate development team led by San Francisco resident Michael Joseph O'Donoghue, more commonly known as Joe O'Donoghue, who is credited with dramatically changing the landscape across the bay in San Francisco through his long history of a variety of lobbying activity for development projects on behalf of the San Francisco Residential Builders Association (RBA).^[38] The parcel owners have also retained the services of Oakland's "Go-To-Lobbyist"^[39][40] who resigned from his job as a legislative aide to the current Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente during a time of controversy over conflicts on interest on zoning matters affecting his personal real property portfolio.^[41] This former legislative aide's corporation, "Terra Linda Development Services," is an Oakland-based consulting firm which labels itself as "a land development and entitlement consulting company." ^[42]

In late 2007, the aforementioned "go to" lobbyist was involved in the founding of the "Oakland Builder's Alliance" which purports to achieve its goals "through the promotion and development of innovative policies, through supporting leaders that promote economic growth in Oakland, and through direct organizing in support of leaders and policies that address the needs of our members and the broad building community of Oakland."

On August 8, 2008, the Oakland CEDA Planning and Zoning Division posted Tree Removal Permit Application notices on the gates to the parcel. The gardens feature a grove of several mature

The entire neighborhood lies within the boundaries of Oakland City Council District 3, represented by Carroll Fife, who defeated incumbent Lynette Gibson McElhaney in the 2020 City Council election.

At the county level, the neighborhood lies within Alameda County Board of Supervisors District 5 and is represented by Supervisor Keith Carson.

At the state level, the neighborhood is in

Most neighborhood restaurants, shops, and services are locally owned and independently operated and enjoy a good business relationship with neighborhood residents who walk to them. Immediately within the neighborhood are small ground floor retail shop spaces which currently feature six grocery and liquor markets, two laundry and dry-cleaner shops, a fabric shop, a tattoo parlor, a gym, a sidewalk cafe one block from Lake Merritt open into the evenings, a pet shop, a diner, a sandwich shop, and two bars. In the fall of 2008, several new ground floor retail shop spaces will be available for lease at two new mixed-use developments on 14th Street in the neighborhood.

In 1871, Oakland's first horse-drawn streetcar line running down Broadway was not three years old when Hiram Tubbs opened his luxurious "Tubbs Hotel" at Fifth Avenue in what was then "Brooklyn," an independent municipality on the east side of the tidal slough which is now lake Merritt. Tubbs, flush with cash from his hemp cordage business and Comstock Lode silver bullion, wanted his hotel to be the on par with the finest in the state. He spared no expense, investing US$110,000 in 1871 dollars for the building and over US$100,000 more on furniture for the rooms.

Hoping to lure passengers from overland trains, Tubbs had rail laid at his own expense, for his own horse-drawn streetcar line, the "Tubbs Line," to carry passengers from the Train Depot at 7th and Broadway eastward to his hotel. The line went up Broadway to 12th Street, and then down 12th Street through what is now the Civic Center neighborhood, out to 13th Avenue. Tubbs' choice of track routing later evolved into the Oakland Brooklyn and Fruitvale Railroad, and eventually, the "A line" of the Key System of electric streetcars which later ran down 12th and 13th Streets. Today, the 12th Street corridor serves articulated AC Transit buses and is currently being planned for a bus rapid transit line.

In the 1960s, on the Broadway corridor, the

Many residents in this neighborhood do not own or drive cars and walk to transit connections such as the 12th Street Oakland City Center, 19th Street Oakland, and Lake Merritt BART stations.

Within the neighborhood,

Crime and census statistics published by Oakland police and government circa 2017–2020 indicate a lowering of violent crime correlated to Oakland's sustained economic revival, hypergentrification in general, and the influx of affluent residents to the district in particular.[47]^[48][49]

Nonetheless, property crimes and acts of violence occur periodically, directly within the interior of the neighborhood. The neighborhood lies completely within

• Community land trust
• Gentrification
• Inclusionary zoning
• Planned shrinkage
• Rent Control
• Principles of Intelligent Urbanism
• Transit Oriented Development
• Transit-proximate development
• Urban renewal