Background & History (LAMMPS)
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Lammps Project History
The genesis of the LAMMPS Project took place in August 2005, under the direction of Claire Antonetti, Chair of the Blight and Beautification Neighborhood Action Team (B&BNAT), a sub-group of Maxwell Park’s Neighborhood Crime Prevention Council (MPNCPC). An art conservator by profession, Ms. Antonetti had long been a resident of Maxwell Park, had used the MacArthur/Pierson gateway to travel in and out of the community daily, and for years had hoped to see a transformation take place throughout this long-blighted and unsafe corridor.
As a result of continuously witnessing the progressive decline of the area since living in the neighborhood, the day came when Ms. Antonetti recognized that she would have to initiate revitalization herself if she wanted change. With her long-time aspiration of creating a rejuvenated and safe gateway to the community, Ms. Antonetti sought the open position of Chair of the Maxwell Park NCPC’s B&B NAT, which she used as a platform to spearhead what would become a long, but steadfast road toward making the much-needed improvements to the community’s gateway; and which would also prove to be the most significant conservation project she would generate to date.
As the B&B NAT was expanded to include interested community members in the project, the group had the good fortune to capture the interest of Robert McGillis, the Vice Chair of the MPNCPC. Being an architect, and using this corridor everyday, Mr. McGillis could offer both his special set of skills and his experience working with the City of Oakland to the project, as well as providing existing plans and aerial photographs of the neighborhood and planning area, to be used throughout the initial phases of the project.
Slowly, the enterprise began to gain the momentum needed to shape its objectives and primary goals: namely to regain a sense of place in the community by making the MacArthur/Pierson corridor a safe, beautiful gateway that residents of Maxwell Park could take pride in, and utilize more fully. The B&B NAT plan would concentrate on the City and Caltrans properties that impacted the area so greatly, with an eye toward improving the intersections and surrounding areas to equal the adjacent manicured properties of Mills College. Of equal importance would be promoting safety for foot, bicycle, auto and bus transit, while establishing a safe, viable link for Maxwell Park and Mills College to the Laurel shopping district.
With early support from District 6 Council Member, Desley Brooks, a connection was forged with Caltrans, and with general support from former Mayor Jerry Brown’s office, from 2005-2006, the project was well underway. In 2007, Councilmember, Jean Quan’s office contacted the B&B NAT and expressed an interest in working together to promote a plan based on her forum Envisioning MacArthur Blvd.: Planning Community Growth for the Next 30-Years, an event conducted at Mills in 2005. With this new development, Richard Cowan, Chief of Staff for Councilmember Quan, joined the ranks and lent his guidance and skills to the project. Mr. Cowan became a key collaborator as he helped join Jean Quan’s ideas for the area with the B & B NAT’s vision, while soliciting participation and input from all affected neighbors and stakeholders.
Soon thereafter, Mills College came on board: Andrew Workman, Associate Provost for Academic Affairs, Rene Jaduslever, Vice President of Operations, Karen Fiene, Mills College Campus Architect, and Brian Harrington, Mills Architectural Assistant, all lent sound advice, experience and a much-needed Mills overview to round out the project. By now, the group’s steering committee was fully established and began conducting joint-meetings hosted by Mills and organized and chaired by Ms. Antonetti. During this time, new alliances were forged with Caltrans, AC Transit, and the City of Oakland’s Community and Economic Development Agency, especially its Neighborhood Revitalization and Transportation Planning departments.
The clear purpose of these meetings was to investigate grant funding, and in order to obtain such financial support, the group began to establish proof that the project was essential to the health and safety of the community. Working with Councilmember Quan and her staff to garner necessary evidence for the plan, 560 neighbors helped define the project by answering a B&B NAT questionnaire/survey, carefully-crafted by Nomi Aloof, to establish what daily users and surrounding residents of the corridor felt was lacking in the area, and what improvements they would like to see along the gateway. Concurrently, Alysha Nachtigall, a Mills student, joined the project and authored an award-winning policy analysis on linking Mills and its surrounding neighborhood to the Laurel. With these two essential tools delivered, the Oakland City Council voted unanimously in 2008 to support the project, which permitted David Ralston, a City of Oakland Community and Economic Development (CEDA), Redevelopment Project Manager and Urban Economic Analyst, to write a thoughtful proposal for a Caltrans Community-Based Transportation Planning Grant, to fund a feasibility study.
In the summer of 2009, Caltrans awarded the project $257,000 to conduct the study, due in large part to Mark Zabaneh, Caltrans Division Chief, Project Manager, who attended steering committee meetings and acted in an advisory capacity, as well as being a key promoter of the project. Jean Quan’s office generously provided an additional $60,000 matching grant. With the allocation of funds, the project was assigned a high-ranking Project Manager, Iris Starr, Senior Transportation Planner for the City of Oakland, and the LAMMPS Steering Committee was positioned to begin the interviewing process in order to hire a talented team of consultants responsible for interfacing with the community and conducting the feasibility study.
At the end of the committee’s search, the following team of consultants was established and the project was officially launched:
- Kimley-Horn and Associates - Linda Debolt and Paul Krupka, traffic & civil engineering and transportation planning
- Robert Sabbatini - streetscape design, landscape design and outreach facilitation
- Envirocom Communications Strategies - Surlene Grant, public and community outreach, meeting and design facilitation
- PLS Survey, Inc. - Topographical and right-of-way surveys
The current feasibility phase of the project will be comprised of various community outreach and visioning sessions, traffic analyses, engineering studies/surveys and landscaping studies, which will culminate in a comprehensive plan for street improvements and possible bicycle/ pedestrian pathways along MacArthur Boulevard from High Street to Seminary Boulevard. The project Steering Committee, consisting of Claire Antonetti, Robert McGillis, Karen Fiene, Brian Harrington, and Richard Cowan, will continue to meet regularly with the consulting team, and will also continue to work with other stakeholders in the project, such as Caltrans, AC Transit and the surrounding neighborhoods.
Once the outreach sessions and studies are complete, the consulting team will generate a final set of plans and drawings based on its findings, with a projected completion for the study at the end of 2010. With plans in hand, the next step will be applying for funding to implement Phase One, the High to Mills portion of the MacArthur corridor. In turn, the final two phases, from Mills to 55th and from 55th to Seminary, will also require grant awards toward project implementation; and will continue to rely on community support to drive the successful outcome of the entire endeavor.
