City Government

More than 250 Jobs and 18 Family and Minority Businesses at Risk

Published

10 years ago

August 5, 2013

There is a well known African proverb – when elephants fight, the grass gets trampled – that seems to sum up the experience of Bill Aboudi’s Oakland Maritime Support Services (OMSS) and the 18 small businesses that operate at OMSS, as they wait to see if the City of Oakland will allow them to move to a temporary site at the port.

Army Base businesses, including PCC Logistics and Impact Transportation as well as OMSS, have until Sept. 3 to move out of the way as construction begins on the Gateway Army Base development project.

The 18 tenants provide necessary trucking services 24 hours a day at OMSS – including tire services, engine repair, an oil collection center, live scan fingerprinting and medical services and a mini-mart.

Bill Aboudi, OMSS

If OMSS and these minority-owned businesses are not allowed to relocate, they face the possibility of going out of business.

As you enter the OMSS yard, you can see trucks lined up waiting for service. Mechanics dressed in their smocks are working on engines and tires. Truckers are relaxing, enjoying tacos and lattes from the mobile lunch truck on site.

Aboudi, OMSS owner, provides a comfortable space for truckers to take advantage of all the services they need in one central location; and their business helps support his tenants.

Nearly 10,000 trucks travel daily through the Port of Oakland with 4,000 truckers coming through OMSS, of which 3,000 are registered with the company.

Jesus Campos has owned Campos Tire Services, or CTS, for the past eight years, employing members of his family. If he were forced to leave the base, he again would have to begin operating a mobile business on the streets.

Working at OMSS, Campos has expanded his services, providing big rigs and cars with tire balancing and recycling old tires. Campos has six employees including his wife and daughter, studying to be a lawyer at UC Davis.

“Its very important for us to survive on this place. I think [relocating] is going to be a big problem for us because we depend on the trucks. How are the trucks going to be accessible to work with us,” said a concerned Campos.

Through his business, he also supports nonprofit The Latina Center, which offers job and food assistance to women and children.

“Here, we’re all like a co-op, we all feed off of each other. The trucks come here so this business works here; otherwise he’s a mobile mechanic. With his stock of tires, he’s able to have a base of operation, so he’s been growing,” said Aboudi.

According to Aboudi, the Oakland Fire Marshall told him that the city has seen a reduction of about $400,000 per year in the cost getting truck repair debris off the streets since 2006 when OMSS moved to the base.

Alberto Ortiz, owner of Christian Brothers

Christian Brothers, owned by business partners Alberto Ortiz and Jorge Rivera, started their truck repair service eight years ago beginning with only two employees. They now have six workers repairing ECU’s – engine control units, what Ortiz calls “the brain of the engine” – and other automotive parts.

“I need a place to work. I got to make a living,” said co-owner Rivera. “I have a family and all these workers – they have families so they really need the job. We’re small business owners – they don’t want to be working on the streets, and I don’t want to be working on the streets.”

OMSS hopes to move to a temporary site on the port’s portion of the old Army Base during construction before moving to its permanent site.

If OMSS is not allowed to move, businesses that may be left out in the cold include the nonprofit Hispanic Business, Education and Training that occupies space at OMSS donated by the port to help truckers in community and economic-development.

Alyn Anays Esnel, owner of Oakland Truck Signs, or OTS, has been working on site at OMSS for three years designing logos, business cards, signs, and other customized advertising material for truckers and companies. She is studying graphic design, art, and multimedia at Berkeley City College while putting her creative skills to work at OTS.

With five part-time employees working for her, Esnel talks about how exciting it is to give other students and recent graduates a chance to gain experience.

“I can give them a job, and then they go on to get other work with experience and a reference from me,” she said.

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Oakland Post: Week of May 31 = June 6, 2023

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of May 31 = June 6, 2023

Published

4 days ago

June 2, 2023

Oakland Post

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of May 31 = June 6, 2023

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Activism

Community Opposes High Rise Development That Threatens Geoffrey’s Inner Circle

City Council chambers were full for the May 17 Planning Commission hearing, and almost all the 40 speakers who had signed up to make presentations talked about the importance of the Inner Circle as part of Oakland and Geoffrey Pete as a stalwart community and business leader who has served the city for decades.

Published

1 week ago

May 30, 2023

Oakland Post

Geoffrey Pete went to City Hall to appeal the city Planning Commission’s approval of the high-rise development that threatens the closure of his 44-year historic cultural mecca. Photo by Jonathan ‘Fitness’ Jones.

By Ken Epstein

An outpouring of community supporters – young, old, jazz lovers, environmentalists and committed Oakland partisans – spoke out at a recent Planning Commission hearing to support Geoffrey Pete and his cultural center – The Inner Circle – an historic Oakland landmark whose future is threatened by a proposed skyscraper that out-of-town-developer Tidewater Capital wants to build in the midst of the city’s Black Arts Movement and Business District (BAMBD).

The speakers argued passionately and persuasively, winning the sympathy of the commissioners, but were ultimately unsuccessful as the Commission unanimously approved the high-rise to be built either as a residential building or office tower on Franklin Street directly behind Geoffrey’s building.

Mr. Pete has said he would appeal the decision to the City Council. He has 10 days after the hearing to file an appeal on the office building. His appeal on the residential tower has already been submitted.

Mr. Pete said the Planning Department still has not published the boundaries of the BAMBD. “Tidewater’s applications and subsequent applications should not be approved until the Planning Department fully acknowledges the existence of the BAMBD,” he said.

“This (proposed) building poses a grave danger to the historic (Inner Circle) building next to it, arguably Oakland’s most meaningful historic building,” Pete said.

“We’re here to advocate for what’s best for the African American district and community that has gotten no representation, no advocacy, as of yet,” he said. “The (commission) is guilty, the City of Oakland is guilty, and Tidewater is guilty.”

One of the first speakers was Gwendolyn Traylor, known as Lady SunRise, who directly addressed the developers.

“With all due to respect to your business, it’s not a need of this community. I would like to ask you to reconsider the location …What is being (promised) here does not add to the healing of this community,” she said.

Naomi Schiff of the Oakland Heritage Alliance emphasized that Geoffrey’s Inner Circle is a treasure of Oakland’s history.

“Our first concern is the integrity of the historic district, in particular the former Athenian-Nile Club, now Mr. Pete’s equally historic venue, which has been the location of a great number of important community events,” she said. “It would not be OK with us if the integrity of the building were damaged in any way, no matter how much insurance (the developer bought) because it is very difficult to repair a historic building once it’s damaged.”

The Inner Circle was previously owned and operated by the Athenian-Nile Club, one of the Bay Area’s largest all-white-male exclusive private membership club, where politicians and power brokers closed back-room deals over handshakes and three martini lunches.

Cephus “Uncle Bobby X” Johnson pointed out that commissioners and the city’s Planning Department have “acknowledged that you went through the entire design review process without even knowing that the Black Arts Movement and Business District existed.”

The district was created in 2016 by City Council resolution. “At the heart of the opposition to this building is the desire to further the legacy of local Black entertainment and entrepreneurship exemplified by businesses like Mr. Pete’s … a historical landmark and venue (that serves) thousands of people who listen to jazz and other entertainment and hold weddings, receptions, and memorial services,” said Uncle Bobby.

This development is taking place within a context in which the “Black population in Oakland has decreased rapidly … because of the city’s concentration on building houses that are not affordable for people who currently live in Oakland,” he said.

John Dalrymple of East Bay Residents for Responsible Development said, “This project will result in significant air quality, public health, noise, and traffic impacts. He said the city has not adequately studied the (unmitigated) impacts of this project on the Black Arts Movement and Business District.

“This project is an example of what developers are being allowed to do when they don’t have to follow the law, and they don’t have to be sensitive to our city’s culture and values,” he said. The commission should “send a signal today that we will no longer be a feeding ground for the rich.”

Prominent Oakland businessman Ray Bobbitt told commissioners, “Any decision that you make is a contribution to the systemic process that creates a disproportionate impact on Black people. Please do yourself a favor, (and) rethink this scenario. Give Mr. Pete, who is a leader in our community, an opportunity to set the framework before you make any decision.”

Though the City Council created the BAMBD, the 2016 resolution was never implemented. The district was created to “highlight, celebrate, preserve and support the contributions of Oakland’s Black artists and business owners and the corridor as a place central historically and currently to Oakland’s Black artists and Black-owned businesses.”

The district was intended to promote Black arts, political movements, enterprises, and culture in the area, and to bring in resources through grants and other funding.

Activism

Community Meeting on Crime and Violence

Join Oakland City Councilmember Dan Kalb to discuss the uptick in crime and violence in District 1 and across Oakland. Representatives from the Oakland Police Department will be in attendance. This event will be held in-person and online.

Published

1 week ago

May 29, 2023

Oakland Post