From left: Geoffrey’s Inner Circle’s Geoffrey Pete and Tidewater Capital’s Craig Young with 1431 Franklin Street (Getty, Geoffrey’s Inner Circle, Tidewater Capital, LARGE)
The owner of an African-American cultural center in Downtown Oakland has decided to oppose an approved 40-story highrise with nearly 400 homes next door.
Geoffrey Pete, owner of Geoffrey’s Inner Circle, has appealed a Planning Commission approval of the 381-unit tower proposed by Tidewater Capital at 1431 Franklin Street, the San Francisco Business Times reported.
Four years ago, the San Francisco-based developer proposed building the 413-foot residential highrise directly behind Pete’s venue. It was unanimously approved for development last month.
At issue is the city’s goal of building homes to bring life into its dead downtown and its desire to safeguard local Black culture. Pete’s building and Tidewater’s entitled project lie within the Black Arts Movement and Business District.
Pete, who has operated the gathering and night spot at 410 14th Street for three decades, has appealed the project on grounds it’s out of compliance with city design standards and state environmental law.
In his appeal, Pete says the Tidewater project would harm Geoffrey’s Inner Circle because it would replace a 95-space parking lot used by patrons, as well as block natural light into its third-floor ballroom.
He has long contended that such high-rise residential development has contributed to the gentrification of Oakland, driving Black residents from the city. Since 1980, its Black population has dropped from 47 percent to 20 percent, according to the Census.
Pete founded Geoffrey’s Inner Circle in 1990, seeking to create “a cultural center for African-Americans to be proud of,” he told Oaklandside in 2021. He moved the business to its current location in 1993 and bought the building a few years later.
Ray Bobbitt, an an East Oakland native and head of African American Sports & Entertainment Group, a Black-owned real estate developer based in Oakland with a $5 billion plan to redevelop the 100-acre Oakland Coliseum, told the Planning Commission that Geoffrey’s Inner Circle is “the most important African-American institution that exists within the city.
“I can tell you this: The swell of community support, with respect to the African American community, is just beginning,” Bobbitt told commissioners. “Whatever the circumstances that need to be in play to preserve Geoffrey’s Inner Circle need to be reconsidered very seriously.”
Tidewater, which declined to comment to the Business Times, told commissioners it had met with Pete seven times since October 2020. It said the firm had made more than a dozen attempts to meet with Pete since May of last year. No eighth meeting ever occurred and dialogue stalled, the firm said
“The preservation of that building and the preservation of his business is very, very important to Tidewater,” a representative for the developer told the commission last month.
The planning commissioners, after listening to the project supporters and critics, ultimately said they felt they could not reject nearly 400 homes in favor of retaining a half-acre surface parking lot.
All seven commissioners voted to approve the project, some urging Tidewater and Pete to put aside their differences.
“It is difficult to state that a parking lot should remain a parking lot given the crisis we are in, and the state of our downtown,” Planning Commission Chair Jonathan Fearn said ahead of the Feb. 15 vote.
Read more
AASEG signs deal with Oakland for $5B Coliseum makeover
Oakland business leaders demand city work to revive Downtown
Tidewater is seeking approval for a 29-story office building as an alternative to the 40-story residential tower at 1431 Franklin.
A representative for Geoffrey’s Inner Circle told the Planning Commission the office tower would be just as harmful for the business as the residential highrise. Commissioners are set to vote on that project in early April.
— Dana Bartholomew
The post Owner of Black cultural center appeals approval of Oakland highrise appeared first on The Real Deal.
The owner of an African-American cultural center in Downtown Oakland has decided to oppose an approved 40-story highrise with nearly 400 homes next door. Geoffrey Pete, owner of Geoffrey’s Inner Circle, has appealed a Planning Commission approval of the 381-unit tower proposed by Tidewater Capital at 1431 Franklin Street, the San Francisco Business Times reported.
The post Owner of Black cultural center appeals approval of Oakland highrise appeared first on The Real Deal. Uncategorized, 1431 Franklin Street, Downtown, Geoffrey's Inner Circle, Oakland, Residential Real Estate, Tidewater Capital The Real Deal
Lead by real estate veteran Robert Khodadadian, Skyline Properties has been instrumental in many multi-million dollar commercial developments, including a $12 million contract for the White House Hotel, a 99-year ground lease of a four-story commercial site in Harlem, and a retail co-op on Prince St. for $50 million.
Robert Khodadadian has long had a simple philosophy about selling real estate. There are approximately a million buildings in the city, and the broker that gets to sell any one among the multitude that will hit the auctioning block at a given moment is, sometimes, simply the person who happens to pitch their services to the right seller.
