Oakland’s Lake Merritt BART Station Could Be Renamed Soon

Oakland’s Lake Merritt BART Station may soon have a new name: Oakland Chinatown Station.

At a groundbreaking ceremony on Thursday for a senior housing development that will be on top of the station, BART Board Member Robert Raburn told KQED he plans to introduce a resolution to rename the station at next week’s board meeting.

“It’s a no-brainer,” Raburn said following the ceremony.

The proposed name change comes as the community celebrated the Chinatown Transit Oriented Development Affordable Housing Project, which will include 97 homes, 44 of which will be set aside for seniors at risk of homelessness. For many at the ceremony, both the project and the name change are a way to begin repairing past harm to the Chinese community in Oakland.

Ted Dang, 80, who grew up in the neighborhood, said that when BART was being built, the agency used eminent domain to acquire property for the Lake Merritt Station, tearing apart the vibrant immigrant community that lived there.

“A lot of my friends and their families were displaced,” Dang said.

Dang said it wasn’t just BART, though.

“The County of Alameda acquired additional blocks for housing,” he said. “Laney College took residential properties as well. The Oakland Museum took residential properties. There was no organization that advocated for the community needs.”

Oakland City Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas, whose district includes Chinatown, said she supports Raburn’s proposal to rename the station.

“The community really wants to take ownership of naming this area as Chinatown. We want to collaborate with our BART Board of Directors to make that happen,” Fortunato Bas said.

The housing project promises to make dramatic changes to the plaza on top of the station. The first phase of construction will include housing and a public park, and subsequent phases will feature mixed-use spaces and office and residential buildings centered around the station.

“What it represents is an opportunity to create a sense of not being a 20th century Chinatown that was kind of insular and looking inwards, but a 21st century Chinatown that looks outward, that looks to connect people — connect to the region, bring people in, and share our culture,” said Ener Chiu, the executive vice president of community building at the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation, the master developer of the project.

Fortunato Bas said she hasn’t yet heard any pushback to renaming the station.

“Part of what we’re going to do with this groundbreaking is start to educate the community about the history of how Chinatown was disrupted and how families were pushed out so that we can let people know why renaming it would be important,” Fortunato Bas said.