It was a hopping hub for jazz during the 1920s and'30s, and by World War II, Seventh Street had become a West Coast blues mecca.

Then urban renewal in the form of BART, the U.S. Postal Service and the Cypress Freeway moved in, eating up blocks of commercial buildings and homes. Lots of folks moved out, commerce dried up and never came back.

Although Seventh Street's glory days are gone, efforts by a collection of community members, property owners and the city of Oakland could prove a renaissance of sorts for the depressed and neglected area between Wood and Union streets.

Walter Hood, a noted West Oakland landscape architect, and his partner, Sarah Raube, have worked with residents to come up with many ideas for sprucing up the street and making it more pedestrian-friendly. They also aim to recall the history of the thoroughfare.

Hood and Raube are turning those ideas into plans that feature reconfigured traffic lanes, diagonal parking, trees, foliage, sculpture, awnings, pole banners, "dancing" street lights and special paving to add interest to ordinary sidewalks.

Some residents have also asked for a series of historical plaques to recall the area's diverse history, said Margot Lederer-Prado, a city planner and project manager.

"There were a lot of Yugoslav and Irish residents," she said. "(The historical elements) don't have to be exclusive to the 1930s or'40s."

Several separate projects will also help to revitalize the street.

The large Mandela Gateway residential development by the Oakland Housing Authority and nonprofit) Bridge Housing between Center and Kirkham streets will add an inviting new plaza, landscaping and public sculpture at Seventh and Mandela Parkway, at no cost to the city.

And down at the western end of Seventh Street, starting at Wood and moving east, the area's blues legends will be commemorated on a series of "Blues Walk of Fame" plaques, an idea conceived by Ronnie Stewart, executive director of the nonprofit Bay Area Blues Society and lead guitarist with the Caravan of All Stars.

Hood's plans call for one "gateway" sculpture at Union Street, and possibly another at Mandela Parkway. A traffic roundabout at Wood Street would be planted with native grasses and serve as an entry or exit to the Port of Oakland. It will help to slow car and truck traffic at the junction where cyclists exit the Bay Trail and make their way over to new bike lanes on Eighth Street.

Hood has also suggested that light-reflective metal panels could be installed to muffle the ear-splitting noise of the frequent BART trains passing on tracks overhead.

Hood's $203,000 planning contract was largely funded by Caltrans, but it will cost millions to do it all, said city planner Margot Lederer-Prado.

The city will host one more community meeting to get input and finalize the plans, then Lederer-Prado intends to apply for a $2.5 million grant offered by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. It requires a 20 percent match.

If the city wins the grant, construction could begin as early as Spring 2005. The first phase will concentrate on the stretch of Seventh between Union and Chester or Henry streets.

How much gets done depends on the amount of money they find.

"We'll be lucky to get some curb money and sidewalk gutters at first," she said.

Changes to traffic lanes or medians west of Chester, where the BART tracks run down the middle of the street, will have to wait until BART completes a retrofit of its track supports, and that won't happen before 2006, Lederer-Prado said.

Work on Stewart's Walk of Fame historical project will also begin during the early phases of construction.

He has $50,000 from Councilmember Nancy Nadel (Downtown-West Oakland) to start installing plaques in sidewalks between Wood and Henry streets a la Hollywood's Walk of Fame. The plaques will be inscribed with the names of legendary black musicians, club owners, and agents who put Oakland on the map during Seventh Street's blues heyday of 1940s, 50s and 60s.

More than 30 clubs, music stores and recording studios once dotted Seventh and surrounding streets. The clubs and cafes served up Southern-style home cooking and blues to homesick soldiers and civilian workers at the Army Base.

The nightspots also drew a largely black clientele from around the Bay Area to catch the likes of B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, and Ike and Tina Turner on their first trip to the West Coast, live at Esther's Breakfast Club, Stewart said.

A young Aretha Franklin opened for B.B. King at the legendary Slim Jenkins, a famously swank and nationally recognized art deco nightspot at Seventh and Wood streets that has since been demolished. Esther's is the only club on Seventh Street to survive, although in its prime it was located on the south side of the street, smack where the front door of the post office building is now.

Bob Geddins, the so-called "Godfather of Oakland blues," started Big Town Records at Seventh and Center streets, helping launch the blues careers of Lowell Fulson and Sugar Pie DeSanto.

"Seventh Street put Oakland on the map and it wasn't because of its Oak trees," Stewart said. "It was because of the blues, like New Orleans and jazz."

Hood has embraced Stewart's plan, even suggesting names and stories of the blues legends could be etched in dancing, light-filled sculptures along the street, elements Hood calls the "wow" factor.

A separate effort to create a Seventh Street historic district, by property owner Lucy Lee Lequin, has already been approved by the Planning Commission. Lequin owns a few old storefronts in the 1600 block of Seventh Street and an empty lot that once housed the historic Lincoln Theater.

Although it does not include significant buildings on other blocks, such as the storefront that served as West Coast headquarters for the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, it does recognize their importance.

E-mail Cecily Burt at## cburt@angnewspapers.com

The Oakland Tribune: Cityside
Leanne McLaughlin, Managing Editor
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