Simeon Commercial Properties is a real estate firm headquartered in San Francisco that acquires, develops and manages mixed-used properties in strategic in-fill locations throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Previous developments of theirs have been opposed by BAARD (Bay Area Residents for Responsible Development). Residents in Richmond, CA have opposed Simeon’s plan to build on toxic waste in that city.
In March of 2002, the Port of Oakland’s Design Review Committee approved Simeon’s design concept for the “Metroport” development on the City of Oakland’s Hegenberger Gateway site. The original design was to be Class A office space, a full-service hotel, and a new BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) connector and intermediate station, on 23 acres. In July, 2003, it was announced that Simeon had drastically scaled back the planned Metroport project, eliminating the hotel and office space, and targeting instead retail opportunities for the site.
In early November, 2003, a Public Review Period began for the Metroport Draft Environmental Impact Report. The Public was never given adequate notice that the Public Review period had begun or that there were any changes to the original planned use. There were six alternative planned uses that were proposed as part of the original plan. Two of these alternative uses included retail components that were not part of the original development plan. Simeon quietly met with some public officials while the general public and community organizations were kept in the dark as to the actual planned use for the site as a retail development with a “supercenter” retailer as its anchor tenant.
In December of 2003, the Public Review Period ended without the community ever being made aware that the Public Review Period had happened.
On January 7, 2004, the Port Commissioners added an addendum to their Final EIR, approving the plan for the retail space and the planned Super Wal-Mart. On January 30, Simeon officially signed Wal-Mart as its anchor tenant, slated to occupy 150,000 square feet. The City of Oakland determined that it has no jurisdiction over Port of Oakland land and that the city’s anti-superstore ordinance passed less than two years before cannot be enforced on the Metroport Development.
There has been growing concern and protest against this development in the year or more since Wal-Mart was signed as the anchor tenant. Wal-Mart contributes to urban blight wherever it is located, as it aggressively seeks to put competing smaller neighborhood retailers out of business. It provides mainly low-paying, minimum-wage jobs with either no or inadequate health benefits and actually coaches its employees on how to apply for food stamps and Medi-Cal, thus creating a greater tax burden on the entire community as its employees are forced to use community public health clinics and emergency rooms for basic medical care. These are usually accessed as a last resort when acute health conditions have progressed to the point that treatment is more expensive with a lesser chance for success, thus driving up the costs of healthcare for all consumers in the state.
Other opposition to this Metroport development is based on environmental and health concerns due to land toxicity, traffic impact, scale, waterfront location, and distance from mass transit. The whole development threatens the ecological health of the waterfront. Long-term health problems due to the toxicity of the land that it is located on cannot be fully calculated. There will also be increased traffic congestion and emissions from autos that will affect the air quality of the neighborhoods adjacent to the development.
CCCO as part of a coalition of labor, environmental and community groups spearheaded by the organization, “Just Cause Oakland,” has demanded that Simeon donate a reasonable portion of their profits for community clinics, job training and education scholarships for East Oakland residents to offset the negative effects of Wal-Mart, particularly since Simeon received a $10 million loan of tax dollars from the Port of Oakland to buy the land for this project. The community also demanded that all aspects of this project use local unionized construction labor and cease the abuse of non-union workers who were forced to both work and live in the partially constructed Wal-Mart building, which is illegal.
CCCO led the way in making the connection with the Simeon, Wal-Mart project to preparing the youth of East Oakland for military recruitment. To add insult to injury, Wal-Mart nationwide has accepted a contract with the U.S. Marine Corps to show hourly in-store recruitment ads to an audience of East Oakland youth who are susceptible to all too often broken and erroneous recruitment promises by the military for education money and job-training skills when most will end up in the “killing fields” of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Because Wal-Mart causes the loss of three jobs for every part-time job they create in poor communities wherever they go, they make our youth more susceptible to the false promises of the military because of the high unemployment and underemployment that Wal-Mart helps create.
This makes opposing Wal-Mart and its anti-employee, anti-union, pro-militarist and anti-community policies of even greater urgency; and counter-recruitment work to offset the pressure of the military in partnership with Wal-Mart is even more essential.
In recognition of this reality, CCCO has been an active and integral sponsor and participant in the community coalition in the planning of a major “town hall meeting” on March 23 that brought out 200 community residents, small-business owners, labor and faith organizations to educate the greater community on the negative impacts that Wal-Mart will have on the East Oakland Community and to demand that the developers share their profit, critically subsidized by public funds, with those impacted through a comprehensive community benefits package.
As a follow-up to the town hall meeting, CCCO staff took part in a protest action of 50 community protesters that descended on the Simeon Commercial Properties corporate offices in downtown San Francisco on April 12. This very vocal and effective protest action was taken after two weeks of attempts by the coalition to get a response from Simeon on the demand to meet to negotiate community benefits for East Oakland. The protesters and their negotiation team of seven community group representatives, (including Wendy Carson from CCCO), were able to gain entrance to the Simeon offices on the 11th floor of 655 Montgomery St. in San Francisco and force the Simeon Vice-president of Retail Development, Rajiv Parikh, to meet with all seven representatives and hear the community’s demands. After a 20-minute meeting, Rajiv Parikh agreed to bring the demands to the attention of his superior, Russell J. Pitto, the chairman of the company and give a response within a week to the coalition.
After hiring an outside firm specializing in public affairs and crisis communications for incident response teams for major corporations, Davies Perceptioneering, to help represent them, Russell Pitto agreed to meet with the community coalition’s negotiating representatives on April 22. The community coalition representatives went as scheduled back to the Simeon corporate offices for an 11:00 A.M. meeting with Simeon and their representatives on April 22 and were greeted with members of the San Francisco police department, threat of arrest, and an increased building security presence at 655 Montgomery St. Ultimately, they were denied entrance to the building. Simeon offered little in the way of reasoning for its heavy-handed approach and refusal to meet with the coalition after having already scheduled the meeting in advance.
To date, Simeon Commercial Properties has refused to meet to negotiate community benefits with the community coalition, and further direct action is being planned. Readers can support this effort by writing to the CEO of Simeon Development, Russell J. Pitto, at 655 Montgomery St., Suite 1190, San Francisco, CA 94111, to express your outrage at their bringing Wal-Mart to Oakland and the treatment of the community coalition. Readers can also express their outrage over Wal-Mart’s airing of military recruitment ads by contacting S. Robson Walton, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Wal-Mart Inc. (and son of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton), by calling him at 479-273-4000. Bay Area residents can also contact the Port of Oakland and their Oakland City Council member condemning their complicity in bringing Wal-Mart to East Oakland, and demanding that the developer negotiate for community benefits in the areas of community healthcare, job training programs and higher-education scholarships for the families of East Oakland.
There will also be an organized protest at the opening of the Oakland Wal-Mart, a date that is yet to be announced. CCCO supporters can also join others in the community in boycotting shopping at the new Wal-Mart store, making it clear to Wal-Mart and those who would partner with and do business with Wal-Mart, that their unfair labor and business practices lead to a greater burden on community services, underemployment, the decimation of competing small businesses, and the exploitation of economically depressed communities. This forces our youth to become vulnerable to the lies of predatory military recruiters. We say that neither Wal-Mart nor the recruiters are welcome in Oakland.
At the very least, these efforts will serve as notice to Simeon and other developers and our own public officials that they need to take pause before engaging in future developments of this type in Oakland and other East Bay communities. There must be broader, public scrutiny of “backroom,” “bait and switch” business dealings that affect our lives and communities.
At CCCO, we believe that taking stands on appropriate policy matters, and promoting those positions, are important ways in which we serve our constituents and our cause. We must not only serve our communities — we must advocate for our communities.