City Government

After San Pablo Ave. Fire, City Modified Real Estate Deal to Financially Benefit Building Landlord

Published

9 years ago

April 5, 2017

Oakland Post

The city went out of its way to acquire state-owned land to exclusively benefit the landlord’s company

By Darwin Bond Graham, East Bay Express

The day after Monday’s deadly apartment fire in West Oakland, the city council voted to modify a potentially lucrative real-estate deal involving Keith Kim, the owner of the fire-ravaged building.

The blaze took four lives and displaced more than 80 people. Records show that Oakland officials knew for years that Kim’s building, at 2551 San Pablo Avenue, was a fire danger. It was the subject of 20 building code complaints since 2007. And fire inspectors flagged the structure as a hazard last week.

But while Kim allowed the building to fall into a dangerous state of disrepair, he was also investing in a company that negotiated an unusual multimillion-dollar real-estate deal with the City of Oakland.

What’s more, the city even went out of its way to acquire state-owned land for the exclusive benefit of the company Kim had a major stake in.

The complicated real-estate transaction involving the city, Kim, plus other investors and companies dates back to 2013.

Businessman Jabari Herbert approached Oakland officials with a proposal: give a company that he and Kim operated, the West Oakland Development Group, the exclusive right to purchase 2.8 acres of state-owned land on Kirkham Street, near Interstate 880. Herbert planned to develop hundreds of apartments and retail shops at the location, potentially worth hundreds-of-millions of dollars.

Herbert told the Express this morning that he was motivated to reclaim the land for West Oakland’s Black community, which had been pushed off the site when the freeways and BART were built. “The public land was taken from private Black business owners and home owners who weren’t paid market rate for those properties,” Herbert said.

The land is currently owned by the California Department of Transportation. Normally, Caltrans auctions off excess property to the highest bidder. But the agency’s policy is to solicit bids from government agencies first, in case they might want to acquire it for a public-benefit purpose.

The city stepped in, on behalf of the West Oakland Development Group, and offered to buy the land from Caltrans for $4.2 million. Oakland officials then planned to immediately sell the land for the same price to Herbert’s West Oakland Development Group.

But the city never issued any public notice seeking input or proposals from other developers. Instead, Oakland negotiated privately with West Oakland Development Group. Officials justified the exclusive deal on the grounds that it would give the city more control over what would be developed on the site.

Emails from last year, obtained via a public-records request, show that Herbert was the everyday face of the West Oakland Development Group. But state documents show that the company was actually incorporated by Hahn Kim, brother of Keith Kim. And its business address is a Montclair home that Keith listed as his personal residence between 2005 and 2009.

For the rest of this East Bay Express article, click here.

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Oakland Post: Week of July 1 – 7, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of July 1 – 7, 2026

Published

18 hours ago

July 5, 2026

Oakland Post

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Inaugural Juneteenth Awards Ceremony Celebrates the Fillmore’s Black History, Leadership and Resilience

Addressing more than 100 Black and Asian attendees, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie stated “San Francisco is reliant on the Black community, and we must invest in this community.”

Published

1 week ago

June 26, 2026

Oakland Post

District 5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmood, Rev. Dr. Amos Brown, Pastor Emeritus of Third Baptist Church, SF Mayor Daniel Lurie. Photo by Linda Parker Pennington.

By Linda Parker Pennington

The Fillmore Community Ambassadors held its first annual Juneteenth Wesley Johnson White Horse Awards ceremony on June 19 inside the newly reopened Fillmore Heritage Center.

The event featured awards for former San Francisco mayors London Breed and Willie Brown, along with Third Baptist Church Pastor Emeritus, Rev. Dr. Amos Brown.

The Koret Heritage lobby at the newly reopened center at 1330 Fillmore St. held a standing-room-only, culturally diverse and multi-generational audience while the art gallery featured photos of Fillmore community members in action, red Japanese lanterns, art and calligraphy, and Chinese artwork, giving the space a multicultural feel.

Addressing more than 100 Black and Asian attendees, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie stated “San Francisco is reliant on the Black community, and we must invest in this community.”

District 5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmood acknowledged that “the Fillmore community has had a difficult history. Thanks to Rev. Amos Brown’s continuous focus on accountability and resistance, you hold us accountable and continue to inspire us.”

Mahmoud is referring to the Fillmore’s Japanese residents who were forced from their homes and sent to concentration camps during World War II. Black people occupied those homes until the return of their Japanese neighbors and then gave them back, while homes that had been unoccupied were lost. The presence of the Asian community on Juneteenth is a testament to that shared history.

In receiving his honor, Amos Brown elicited a powerful spontaneous call-and-response, where members of San Francisco’s many Black churches proudly shouted out the names: “Bethel AME! Providence Baptist! Jones Memorial! Glide!”

Awards program Master of Ceremonies Shawn Richards of Brothers Against Guns warmly introduced Breed, highlighting her many accomplishments, particularly on “March 16, 2020, when she became the first mayor to shut down a major U.S. city due to COVID-19, saving thousands of lives.”

The audience was captivated by Breed’s emotional speech touching on past traumas, present conditions, and future hopes for the neighborhood where she grew up.

She recalled another trauma of the neighborhood during the City’s redevelopment era in the 1960s, where Black residents were forced to move with a promise of being able to return that was largely unfulfilled.

“We remember when this land was just a field because they bulldozed hundreds of Victorian homes that Black people owned. They built the Fillmore Center, where most Black people can’t afford to live or start their own business. But we are still here.”