By Brandon Patterson

The former North Oakland headquarters of the Black Panther Party could be converted into apartments under a new proposal from the building’s current owner, a plan that has drawn consternation from community members about the implications of tearing down the historic site while receiving mixed reactions from former members of the BPP.

Kim Cloud, who has owned the building since 1996 and currently runs a bakery out of it, is proposing to convert the building into a five-story, 20-unit apartment building and said at an online hearing of the Landmark Preservation Advisory board on Monday that his aim is to create more housing in Oakland.

He has the backing of Fredrika Newton, the widow of BPP co-founder Huey Newton. Yet, other former BBP members voiced concern at the meeting or to the media in the past week.

The advisory board voted to allow the proposal to go through the standard city review process on Monday, while requiring Cloud and his development partners to do a deeper historical analysis of the property than the one they presented at the meeting and develop added proposals for how to preserve BPP history at the site if their redevelopment plan gets approved by the city.

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“The concerns I hear from the community and staff and folks on this board is that it’s just not quite there,” board member Chris Andrews said on Monday, referring to Cloud’s team’s preservation proposal.

The development plan made waves on social media last week after a picture of the notice of the plan posted in the window of Cloud’s bakery began circulating online. Commenters on Instagram raised concerns about the role of gentrification in bringing an end to the historic site, located at 5616-5626 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, and opponents of the plan voiced similar concerns at Monday’s hearing.

The proposal would create 18 units of market-rate housing while reserving just two units for low-income residents. And while the building has already been significantly altered since the days of the BPP, memorabilia commemorating the history of the site, including copies of the original BPP newspaper and the organization’s famous Ten Point plan, currently hang on the wall in the bakery.

Cloud has worked collaboratively with former BPP members to preserve the history of the party at the site. But a historical analysis conducted on behalf of his development team determined that the building itself does not qualify for historic preservation since the only current marker of the site’s history is the “impermanent” display of memorabilia on the bakery’s wall.

Fredrika Newton read a statement in support of the proposal at Monday’s meeting, noting that an agreement between the Huey P. Newton Foundation and Cloud ensured that the BPP’s history would be preserved there. “[We] believe the appropriate path forward is to support a Black and Oakland-owned redevelopment that will simultaneously welcome us to expanding our footprint at the site.”

But other former BPP members have expressed resistance. “Consulting us is the best thing, whether it’s yea or nay,” Katherine Campbell, who was active in the BPP in San Francisco and Oakland, told The Oaklandside, “We didn’t know if we were going to live to tell the story, but we did, and we’re here.”

Another former party member, Saturu Ned, raised concern about access to the new housing for low-income residents. “Someone has a right to look at what’s going to benefit them and their family,” said Ned, “but also we need to look at the community.”

“When we did housing, it was housing according to income.”

According to The Oaklandside, city planners said at the meeting that Oakland’s zoning manager would make the final decision, and the proposal will not come up for discussion again at other public meetings.

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