As Mayor, Brown Remade Downtown Oakland and Himself
Years in Oakland give insight into current candidacy for governor
During his eight years as Oakland mayor, Jerry Brown maintained the idiosyncratic lifestyle associated with his four decades in California politics: He slept on a futon on the floor of his downtown Oakland loft, had a Labrador named Dharma and sometimes performed his mayoral duties while wearing pants with holes in them.
But when he was in City Hall from 1999 to 2007, Brown pursued an agenda that supporters and critics alike describe as an exercise in hard-nosed big-city politics. In his quest to bring 10,000 new residents to Oakland’s abandoned downtown, he cut generous deals with developers, streamlined the approval process and pushed aside city officials who stood in the way.
He also alienated some of his traditional base, progressive and black leaders who derided his policies as “Jerryfication” and accused him of abandoning the rest of the city for his downtown dreams.
A look inside Brown’s 10K Project — his plan to attract 10,000 people to live downtown by 2001, which was the cornerstone of his tenure as mayor — reveals the transformation of his political career. Ultimately, it helped lead to his latest candidacy for governor.
“Jerry Brown is an interesting animal,” said Ignacio De La Fuente, who served as City Council president during Brown’s terms. “He has come from the liberal hypothetical philosophical guy to a guy that learned that the only way to get stuff done is pushing the system.”
Wilson Riles Jr., a former councilman who lost a bid to unseat Brown in 2002, said Brown decided to become mayor “to change his image from Governor Moonbeam to an image of someone who can get down and dirty and make change in a tough urban city.”
“I would say that Oakland definitely did more for Jerry than Jerry did for Oakland,” Riles said.
Brown’s 10K plan is still incomplete nearly four years after he left Oakland to become the state’s attorney general. The city has said it will take 6,000 new units to house 10,000 residents. To date, 3,549 units have been completed from projects approved during the Brown years. Another 310 are under construction. More than 2,149 have been approved but have yet to be built. According to the city, they are stalled by the recession.
There is no official count of new residents, but Brown’s efforts have certainly changed downtown Oakland. Empty parking lots have been transformed into apartment buildings. New bars, restaurants and the refurbished Fox Theater — financed in part by the city under Brown — have spurred night life and a growing arts scene.
“I saw that we had the transportation to build a vibrant center, and that was my goal,” Brown said in an interview this week. “We needed housing and not just for people that are hanging on or people who live on subsidies, but people who have disposable income that can go to the art galleries and restaurants.”
Brown said that the only way for Oakland to rebound was to get money flowing from private developers.
“Maybe some people think it was anti-progressive,” he said. “I’m just telling you I don’t have that ideological baggage.”
Brown expanded his office’s powers with the so-called “strong mayor” measure. He put his allies on the Port and Planning Commissions and endorsed City Council candidates who favored his agenda.
Brown shook up Oakland’s planning process to get projects approved faster. In 2003 he ousted Leslie Gould, the policy-focused planning director, replacing her with Claudia Cappio, a development director who had served in a similar position in fast-growing Emeryville. He also successfully lobbied the state to exempt more Oakland projects from the state’s lengthy environmental review process.
“He focused his planning department not on policy, not on zoning, but on getting deals done,” said Jane Brunner, the current City Council president.
The centerpiece of the 10K project is the Uptown, three low-rise buildings with a modernist flair, built by the national developer Forest City. Brown courted the company — and made a deal to give it a $61 million subsidy to build in Oakland. The project was approved in 2004 by the City Council and opened in 2008 across the street from Sears on Telegraph Avenue.
Of the 665 units in the Uptown, 638 have been leased, according to the company. The Uptown was planned to be leased since it was approved. Several other 10K projects that were originally slated as condos have since been turned into rentals as well because of the bad economy.
Mike Ghielmetti, president of Signature Properties, said Brown opened the doors of City Hall to developers.
“He was very accessible,” said Ghielmetti, whose projects included the Broadway Grand building and a 3,100-unit development that has yet to be built. “He listened to the business community and didn’t necessarily agree with everything we had to say, but he tried to make sure that if there were just bureaucratic issues, that things got taken care of.”
At the same time, advocates of affordable housing felt that Brown slammed the door on them. They sought an inclusionary zoning policy that would have required a certain percentage of units in each new development to be made affordable to low-income residents.
“We are the only major Bay Area municipality without an inclusionary zoning ordinance,” said Junious Williams, Jr., chief executive of the Urban Strategies Council. “Had we had something during the period of the economic boom, I’m not sure it would’ve dissuaded people from developing because Oakland was still such a deal. It seemed like a natural win-win.”
In the end, community organizations like the Urban Strategies Council fought the city to get affordable housing included in individual projects like the Uptown, which built 25 percent of its housing to be affordable.
“The problem is that the local issues aren’t heard beyond Oakland,” said Riles, the former mayoral opponent. “What they hear is that here’s this good liberal guy doing moderate things for the business community, but you don’t hear about the details, the big subsidies to the developers, the issues with gentrification, the local and minority contractors who didn’t get work.”
Brown said that what he did “was necessary for Oakland,” saying that each city is its “own organism.”
Meg Whitman, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, rarely mentions the 10K project. A spokeswoman for her campaign said that “Jerry Brown can try and debate his philosophy” and then questioned him on his views on taxes. The Whitman campaign has focused on Brown’s record on education in Oakland, which was not as notable.
With the race for a new Oakland mayor in full swing, Brown said he was supporting Don Perata, a more conservative Democrat, who is supported by businesses and the police union. Perata, a strong-willed politician who ran the State Senate, was the target of a now-closed, five-year F.B.I. investigation into kickbacks.
“We need a strong hand at the tiller,” Brown said.
When Brown was asked if Perata would run Oakland as he had, the former mayor said, “I think he will.”
He added, “I have certain unique qualities, and I am not a deal maker in that sense.”
This article also appears in the Bay Area edition of The New York Times.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated that the Uptown project, built by Forest City, was slated as condos and switched to rentals because of the economic downturn. In fact at the time of the its approval in 2004, the Uptown was already planned as a rental project.
Marie McIntosh
This sort of thing happened in Boston too, the mayor spent a lot of money redeveloping Downtown Crossing, to the detriment of many underserved neighborhoods in the city. It's a tough line to toe, redevelopment and growth at the expense of an underserved population that inhabits an area already...
Tizzie Lish
It seems to me that this writer is out to 'get' Jerry Brown. Why only present stories that offer critical points of view? I'd like to read positive stories about Brown and Whitman. One of them is going to be our next governor. Instead of using your position as a journalist to tell us negative things about them, what the heck, invest your writing efforts to tell citizens good information about both of them. Let's stop having negative public conversations.
I know the power of negativity. As an aspiring fiction writer, I have had countless writing teachers tell me there has to be friction in my stories if I want to sustain a reader's engagement with my work. Friction attracts human attention where happy good stuff bores us?
Jerry Brown has done some good things in public office, right? Write about that.
Or write an in depth piece about what he did in downtown Oakland.
I see that baycitizen is designed to get out very short pieces that will be taken up by other media. I see that this story fits the parameters of baycitizen. But journalism should serve society, not some narrow agenda to get buzz in the internetsphere.
And why did you waste some of your precious column inches talking about Brown's endorsement of Perata. .. what does that have to do with the governor's race? Surely the main thing that matters about Jerry Brown right now is that he is running for governor? Who cares about Perata in this context?
Tizzie Lish
I am just popping off in this comment but the writer of this piece on Brown is, presumably, getting paid, i.e. is a professional journalist. This piece reads like the writer just popped off some thoughts without thinking through what he was writing about. Is that how 'journalists' work these days, popping off like bloggers? There is a difference between a reader popping off as I am and a paid jouralist writing a rambling, vague piece about Brown. Why is what Jerry did in Oakland being written about at all? Maybe that should be included in our piece instead of that stuff about Perata? Is this the kind of journalism taught in j school these days? No wonder journalism is in trouble.
Jonathan Weber
Tizzie, I don't understand your criticism. Brown's track record as Mayor of Oakland is obviously relevant to his campaign for governor. And the piece is hardly an attack, it simply looks at how his policies have played out, good in some ways and less good in others.
annalee allen
why does the writer say that Oakland's downtown was "abandoned?" What does she base this on? This term is exactly the kind of thoughtless regurgitation of the Gertrude Stein "there is no there there" quote about Oakland that folks who are not from here like to spout. I would expect better coverage from the NY Times. What a disappointment. Our town deserves better. If Jerry Brown is remembered for nothing else than for spearheading the reopening of the magnificent Fox Oakland after it had been closed for 40 years, he would be a winner in my book.
voltairesmistress
My impression is that Oakland has plenty of inexpensive housing, but those units are often in dangerous neighborhoods. I don't like Brown, but it seems to me he did well in this aspect of governing Oakland.