The City will prepare an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) regarding a proposal to build a 42-story condo building on the site of the historic Schilling Garden near Lake Merritt. The City invites comments from the public regarding the scope of the EIR at either of two upcoming hearings (November 28 and December 10) or in writing until December 10.

Join Oakland Heritage Alliance (OHA) this Sunday for its annual home tour. This year’s tour—Seeing San Antonio Anew—is a wonderful opportunity to experience a part of Oakland that is rarely on tour. The San Antonio Hills Neighborhood Association joins OHA in welcoming visitors to what were once the separate settlements of San Antonio and Clinton.

The recent meeting sponsored by the developers of the proposed 42-story development that would sit on the site of the historic Schilling Garden was more a display of rhetoric than reasoned discussion. Oakland’s preapplication/predevelopment process should be reviewed and restructured to provide a forum for achieving community consensus and better urban planning—not merely a mechanism for developers to create the appearance of support from a lopsided selection of “community representatives.”

Sidebar: Who is Joe O’Donoghue?

[Editor’s note: This is a sidebar to “An emerald view or a gaze through a Coke bottle fragment?”]

A development partnership has submitted a proposal to reuse the older half of the Ninth Avenue Terminal at the Oak-to-Ninth site. The reuse would house a combination of winemaking businesses, a restaurant, a tasting room, and some water-oriented businesses or nonprofit marine research groups.

Naomi Schiff, president of Oakland Heritage Alliance, supports Measure N in order to provide long-overdue improvements to the branch libraries and more space for Main, while creating a vibrant cultural hub on the 12th Street shore of Lake Merritt.

A standing-room-only crowd at today’s Public Works Committee meeting heard city-staff justifications for turning down the garden’s donation, under close questioning from city council members.