Robert Kidd

President, Jack London Aquatic Center

The concept of an aquatic center at Oakland’s Estuary Park was first suggested by Cleve Williams, then the director of Oakland’s Office of Parks & Recreation, back in 1993. Our group had proposed the idea of building simple storage for rowing crew shells, on the shores of the Oakland Estuary. Cleve had a larger vision: a multi-use facility that would serve all the communities of Oakland. Cleve urged us to incorporate as a non-profit, and asked us to work up a proposal based upon his larger vision.

And so in 1994, we incorporated as the Jack London Aquatic Center, Inc. ("JLAC"), with a fifteen-member board of directors. Three years later, the Oakland City Council authorized JLAC to build an aquatic center in Estuary Park, and it allocated construction-money from Oakland’s Measure K Open Space Bond fund. Additional grants were provided by the Port of Oakland, the California Coastal Conservancy and the Waterfront Plaza Hotel. The project was completed earlier this year, and the City has now asked the JLAC to manage the facility on the City’s behalf.

The Aquatic Center encloses 18,000 square feet: five boat bays on the bottom floor and a large community room upstairs. From the boat bays downstairs, you will see aquatic programs that involve human- or wind-power, sailing hosted by Oakland’s Office of Parks & Recreation; rowing through programs like the Oakland Strokes and the Berkeley High School crews; kayaking; dragon boat racing; etc. The Aquatic Center does not presently include a swimming pool: it’s about boating on the Oakland Estuary.

Part of our challenge will be to create among Oakland residents a demand for aquatic activities. For decades, public access to the Estuary waterfront was rather restricted. The major recreational access was through yacht clubs where, of course, you had to own a yacht and pay a lot for dock space. More recently, the Port of Oakland and the East Bay Regional Park District have developed parks adjacent to the water; the new aquatic center will be the first facility that will enable the public to recreate on the water.

The JLAC is pursuing initiatives to increase community involvement. Starting in February 2002, we hope to offer kayaking classes, in collaboration with Laney College, Oakland Unified School District and California Canoe and Kayaking. We are meeting with the Metropolitan YMCA to develop rowing/paddling programs that will take advantage of the Y’s excellent swimming programs. We are working with the Save the Bay organization to host its "Canoes and Sloughs" program. In short, we seek to collaborate with any community group interested in waterfront activities.

Organizing all of this takes a lot of time, and the fifteen members of the JLAC board of directors and I are all volunteers. I’m fortunate that my law practice enables me to make up on weekends time that I devote to the aquatic center during the week. I also have a very understanding wife. In truth, none of us rue the time that we spend on aquatic center business. We are having the times of our lives. I can’t tell you how gratifying it is for us to engage folks in Aquatic Center business: the Mayor; the City Manager; City Councilmembers; the director of Parks & Rec.; the Bay Conservation of Development Commission; community groups — people whom we wouldn’t otherwise meet in a hundred years.

I live in Oakland; I came here in 1970 to join the Oakland Police Department. Back in those days, college students sought vocations that were relevant, not necessarily those that were well-paying with stock-options. As a student at Columbia University during the late 1960’s, I had a number of face-to-face encounters with the New York City Police Department. From those encounters I got the quirky notion that I could spend some relevant time being a policeman. It was a volatile time in Oakland, both politically and socially, and an interesting time to be a policeman. My years as an Oakland cop were among the best of my life. I enjoyed the excitement of the work, and I developed a real bond with the neighborhoods and the people of Oakland. I left the OPD in 1974, to attend law school at UC Davis. When I graduated from law school, my highest priority was to return to Oakland, where my family and I have lived ever since.

When I first arrived in Oakland in 1970, I was amazed to see rowing on Lake Merritt. The urban setting was beautiful and — more importantly — the water was "flat." I had always associated rowing with the East Coast, and was surprised to find the sport alive and thriving in Oakland. I joined the Lake Merritt Rowing Club, and coached a boys’ crew at Skyline High School for several years. (Back in 1970, there were crew teams at Skyline, Oakland, Fremont and Oakland Tech High Schools!)

I was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Inglewood. My father was a plumber and my mother was a homemaker. I studied at Columbia University in New York, graduating in 1970. My wife Joan is an attorney in San Francisco; our daughter Allison just graduated from university and lives in New York City; our son Chris is a freshman at Tufts University in Boston.

It was at Columbia University that I discovered crew rowing. I was captain of the crew in 1969, and so, yes, I really am a "Captain" Kidd.

Mark Seiler

Managing Partner, Metrovation

Metrovation is a real estate development company. However, our primary focus is as community enablers rather than traditional developers. We look for environments that have some strong fundamentals such as good infrastructure, demographics, and an enthusiastic local community that wants to ascend to the next level. Our approach is an organic marketing based approach. We like to build upon what is already successful in an area and then promote it to the broader community. By creating a focus for an area and a shared destiny with the local community members it is possible to create an aura around an area, neighborhood, district or city. Once this is achieved, the vision becomes self-fulfilling. This process often takes several years.

We have been working in the Ironworks District of Jack London Square for over a decade. Through our previous company, Terranomics Development, we did a lot of the retail leasing at Jack London Square. We brought in Barnes & Noble, Yoshi’s, the movie theater and some of the restaurants. The Oakland Ironworks building which includes Bed,Bath & Beyond was probably the first renovation to take place in the area.

With Jack London Square, we’ve been buying buildings from 5th Street to 2nd Street and Martin Luther King to Madison Streets. We have emphasized retail and office uses to populate the area during the day. What we like about the Jack London area is that the scale is right, the road patterns are good, the proximity to the workforce, and a committed City government. The district also possesses a good deal of interesting buildings that can be adapted to more productive uses without impacting the natural character of the area.

Oakland was passed over in the recent growth cycle because people were going further and further out. But now people are coming back to the urban core and experiencing the benefits of it. Before they would say "I don’t want to deal with inner city environments." Now, people just want to be where the action is, where it’s cool and hip.

Oakland is a culturally diverse place. The whole East Bay is really a big melting pot. Initially that took some work to make retailers understand the shopping patterns mentality of the Bay Area, but now it is not an issue or the diversity is actually a benefit.

We were the beneficiaries of everything that went on in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, where rents got so ridiculously high. We positioned Oakland as a viable alternative. Once people came over, even though rents in San Francisco and the others areas dropped, people wanted to stay in Oakland. They like it better. It’s on a public transportation route. The weather is better. There is less congestion. The parking is cheaper. For all these reason, I think Oakland’s achieved a stability that’s I don’t think it’s ever had, at least not in my lifetime.

When we look for areas to invest in we try to identify those unique characteristics which make an area compelling. For example, in Jack London Square people love to be near the openness of the estuary as well as the commerce of the Port. There’s a sense of freedom and a sense of opportunity coupled with a sense of economic vitality along this coastline. Match that up with an area with a mentality that backs that up, you can achieve great things. Oakland has all that.

We’ve made a substantial investment in Oakland and Jack London Square, of time and money. It’s been great. We’ve had a great time. We’ve seen the area really change in the last ten years. It’s certainly a long process but we’ve seen it achieve a lot of the things people said couldn’t happen. Long term, we’re very, very bullish on it and we think it’s going to continue to be a terrific market for us. 

Captain Robert Cooper

Jack London Water Taxi

The Jack London Water Taxi is an Oakland Estuary inner harbor tour/water taxi service. We’re trying to do a service for the people but funding is hard. What we’ve done is get local business like The Fat Lady, Bed Bath And Beyond, Chevy’s and several others, for a small fee, they put a little advertisement inside the water taxi. And this helps a little bit to keep this water taxi moving. Like take Jack’s Bistro: someone from Alameda is coming to Oakland and they don’t really know where they’re going but they see an ad on the boat for Jack’s Bistro so they decide to stop in there and have dinner or have a drink. The fare is $5 each way, and that, with the advertising, is what keeps us going.

We leave Jack London Square every hour on the hour starting at Noon on Wednesday and we go Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday from Noon to 6 p.m, making a loop through the inner harbor and directly across to Mariner’s Square. John Beery, of the property management company in Alameda, he’s provided us with a berth there and helps promote the water taxi on the Alameda side. Another big promoter there is Alameda Village Yacht Harbor. About 35% of the business is actually coming out of Alameda, from Mariner’s Square, to Jack London Square.

John Berry has been really instrumental in the Alameda side. He understands that this is a private operation, how difficult it is to get things going. He uses the water taxi personally. In fact, the Mayor of Alameda has even been on it at least a half a dozen times. I didn’t even know he was the mayor. I was talking to him and when he was done talking, he handed me his card. It’s become real popular because on the Alameda sidebecause it’s just an inconvenience to go to Jack London Square with an automobile from there. I’ve been hearing about this tube going through (editor’s note: he means the Alameda/Oakland Webster Street/Posey Tube Earthquake retro fit project, which is causing the tunnel, a principal way of getting from Oakland to the island of Alameda, to be closed weeknights starting at 8 PM).

A lot of people think the water taxi is part of the Port of Oakland. The Port has been real helpful for us. Steve Hansen, a real estate director for the Port, and Omar Benjamin, the both of them.

I’ve been doing this 4 years. I got the idea sitting at the estuary and watching things go by. I thought it’d be nice to go over to the other side and see what’s going on. I’d sailed up and down there on a private boat several times and it was really nice to stop in Jack London Square and grab something to eat, jog your way around. It’s a really friendly atmosphere along the Estuary.

So I bought a boat, had it custom-built by a company back east. Had to go around and measure all the docks on the Alameda side to get the dimensions right and there’s over a thousand boats in Alameda! It was quite an investment. I hate to state the number because it turns my stomach.

But we’re hanging in there. Running the business is hard, but no harder than running the water taxi because of the current and the wind in the Estuary. It’s like operating a sailboat without a keel. There’s no rudder. It’s just power on, power off when landing. You have to think ahead of yourself on that.