Search Continues for Funding and Purpose for Oakland’s Historic 16th Street Train Station

Badly needed repairs to West Oakland’s historic 16th Street Station are still far from a done deal — following decades of neglect and multiple owners.

The main sticking point has been finding the money to pay for the repairs. City Ventures, the train station’s latest owners, hired Arthur Combs, the principal of OE Consulting, to explore fundraising.

“Most of the [previous] restoration efforts have focused on the physical plant of the building, restoring this glorious architectural edifice, and that’s crucial,” he said. “But our focus is really on the benefit to the community. And we hope that that slight shift in focus will inspire a donor or seven.”

City Ventures, a housing developer based in San Francisco and Irvine, bought the historic station in 2022 — and, earlier this year, hired OE Consulting, which focuses in part on coming up with organizational strategies for nonprofits, public agencies and businesses.

City Ventures applied with the city of Oakland to build a 77-unit townhome-style development — dubbed “Signal House” — on the areas around the station. The proposal has been under review since May 2023 and does not include rehabilitation of the station. Repairs to the station, which include seismic retrofitting, are estimated to cost around $50 million, according to Combs.

Combs said among the initial steps is a search for an “anchor funder” — someone who can donate $3 million to $5 million to kickstart the restoration project for the station.

OE Consulting is soliciting community input, too.

“We’re looking for an anchor funder who believes that the community needs to make the final call,” Combs said. “[The funder] may have preferences for public health, early childhood, a history of activism in West Oakland, a social justice nonprofit hub or an entrepreneurship hub, but they will trust the community to make the final call and be willing to underwrite a startup amount of money.”

Combs said OE Consulting has been in conversations with a few community leaders and influencers, asking them what they feel the community needs.

Daniel Levy, president of the Oakland Heritage Alliance (OHA), and other longtime advocates of the station are demanding that City Ventures include rehabilitation of the station along with their proposal for housing on the site. Nearly 2,000 people have signed on to the alliance’s petition in agreement.

“Our fear is sort of a divide and conquer mentality where the housing moves forward, the community is placated with renderings and hopes and dreams of a restored station, the housing gets approved, built, and then the momentum for doing something with the station falls apart,” Levy said.

OHA has also submitted an application to add the station to the National Register of Historic Places. Levy said, if approved, this would unlock tax credits for restoration work.

The once beautiful, bustling station, built in 1912, was a major transportation hub that saw hundreds of trains every day and fueled the booming economy of West Oakland in the early to mid-1900s. It was badly damaged after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, and service ended in 1994.

OHA has also asked City Ventures to reconsider the design of the development, which they say encroaches on the station and obscures the historic baggage wing. West Oakland served as the West Coast headquarters for the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters — the first Black union in the United States — and those porters worked out of the baggage wing.

Combs said OE consulting has been in talks with several potential anchor funders, but there is no commitment from any of them yet.

“City Ventures is incredibly sensitive to making an implicit promise or an explicit promise to the community of West Oakland and then inadvertently breaking it,” he said. “There have been so many starts and stops with this station. There’s just no guarantee that this is going to work.”