A long-awaited path improving access to shoreline and waterways recently opened in Deep East Oakland. On November 9, community members gathered for food, music, and dancing at a groundbreaking celebration for the San Leandro Creek Trail.
The trail is located along the San Leandro Creek in East Oakland, south of Interstate 880. The San Leandro Creek flows from Lake Chabot to San Leandro Bay, which is only accessible from the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline. When finished, walkers and bikers will have access to a 0.7 mile, multi-use trail extending alongside the creek from Empire Rd near Columbia Gardens to the San Leandro Bay.
The project will also feature a new pedestrian bridge and traffic signals at both 98th Ave and Hegenberger Road. Oakland high school students are designing educational interpretive signs.
For 19 years, through numerous planning sessions and community meetings, the project was a labor of love for Robin Freeman, former Merritt College Professor of Environmental Management and Technology.
“Some years ago, a friend and I walked up the creek from the Hegenberger bridge upstream into San Leandro. Besides our own voices, the creek was quiet. The city noise was only a faint background sound punctuated by an occasional bird call,” the now retired Freeman said. “I did not expect that being so close to home within San Leandro Creek’s banks would allow me to lose myself in another world, but I am so glad it did.”
Freeman, now a co-director at the Brower Dellums Institute for Sustainable Policy Studies, told groundbreaking attendees that the trail could connect East Oakland to Lake Chabot and beyond.
Ayano Jeffers-Fabro, one of the project managers working with both the Brower-Dellums Institute and the East Oakland Neighborhood Initiative, said the project is part of an effort to create a community plan for six East Oakland neighborhoods and had community support.
“We are rooted in Deep East Oakland and we are focused on changing the way planning is done in our neighborhoods,” Jeffers-Fabro told Oakland Voices. “This is a full circle moment for us, after working on community-based design, to see it all coming into fruition.”
It was also a full-circle moment for Keta Price, known as “The Hood Planner,” another project manager at EONI and Communities for a Better Environment. A former Merritt College student, Price said the trail will provide residents a safe route for cultural connections along the creek.
“Right now, if you go to the shoreline, you have to use San Leandro Boulevard. And we all know how toxic and unsafe and just unfriendly that route can be,” Price said. We’re trying to create safer, cleaner routes to our waterways.” Residents told Price that they wanted to see the cultures and histories of different groups represented through art and benches. “We want to tell stories about the Japanese descendants that were here, about the Native Americans, the African Americans, and also our Latin Americans.”
The project plan involved meetings in the neighborhoods and with government agencies. Numerous Merritt College students assisted the project for almost 18 years. David Ralston, currently a Senior Policy Advisor at the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), also taught classes and coordinated convenings that helped bring the project together.
The California Urban Greening Grant Program (Senate Bill 859), administered by the California Natural resources Agency (CNRA), funds the creek project. The $4.1 million grant must be allocated by the end of the month.
Later phases will connect the creek trail to the San Leandro BART station and eventually link to Lake Chabot and the East Bay Regional Parks trails.
This phase of the project also calls for the planting of 170 trees along the trail and at Columbian Gardens park.
“The tree planting needs to happen ideally in or near the rainy season as long as whatever the construction phase happens to be doesn’t interfere,” Freeman said.
The community groups, like EONI, CBE, Sobrante Park RAC, the Brower Dellums Institute, and Higher Ground, are looking for volunteers to help plant trees next year. The trail is slated to open in 2025.
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