From the Ashes of Eastmont Mall, Rises a New Hope

Pound Bizness founders Reggie and Nicole Borders.

Reggie and Nicole Borders had sold slices of her homemade pound cake— inspired by a recipe from Reggie’s aunt— nearly every Sunday morning at the corner of 73rd Ave. and Foothill Blvd. in Deep East Oakland since 2020 when they were among the first local business owners who helped turn a vacant lot into what’s known today as “Liberation Park.”

“Liberation Park is a place, but it’s always been about the people we’ve met through the land,” Borders told the Oakland City Council recently, noting that as their company “Pound Bizness” has grown to more locations, they hired young people from the neighborhood to bake and deliver cakes. “Liberation Park is a lifeblood for our small, local businesses, but it’s also a lifeblood for East Oakland’s artists, entrepreneurs, and residents who live in the neighborhood.”

In many ways, the 1.2-acre lot in the 40x40 neighborhood tells the story of divestment from Deep East Oakland – and its rebirth. Once the site of a JCPenney Auto Center at the popular Eastmont Mall in the 1980s, the lot was converted into a police depot during the crack epidemic until it was deserted as an abandoned field of weeds for nearly two decades, recalled Carolyn “CJ” Johnson, CEO of the non-profit Black Cultural Zone. “Sometimes they’d find dead animals and who knows what else in that lot,” Johnson said.

Liberation Park, East Oakland.

The Black Cultural Zone Collaborative and Community Development Corporation reclaimed and rehabilitated the space into today’s Liberation Park, where entrepreneurs like the Borders sell their goods at the Akoma Grand Market and where local residents regularly enjoy the West Coast’s largest outdoor skating rink or gather to watch outdoor movies on hot summer nights.

But now, the lot is positioned for an even grander renaissance. In February, the City Council unanimously approved the first reading of the Black Cultural Zone’s plans to build, along with their development partners Eden Housing and Community Arts Stabilization Trust, 119 affordable housing units on the parcel, along with a bustling three-story “Market Hall and Cultural Hub” that will host a food hall, cultural center, support local businesses and artists, and create a stable economic hub for Deep East Oaklanders.

“At our core, our vision has always been to build the infrastructure that supports a Black Cultural Zone,” Johnson said. “A single unified space for economic development, good jobs, homes, and a better quality of life among our neighbors.”

The new development is a flagship initiative of Rise East, a collective impact effort underway in East Oakland, which is crafted to bring $100 million in new philanthropic investments into the 40x40 neighborhood. The group has raised nearly $29 million of the $50 million required to be eligible for a $50 million matching investment from Blue Meridian Partners, a national philanthropic organization.

Johnson believes significant investments into developments, such as  the affordable housing and market hall at Liberation Park, will transform the neighborhood by addressing residents’ most pressing needs. 

“We see this as a prototype for the kind of developments we need throughout East Oakland,” Johnson said. “When we tie housing and local jobs together and create centers of cultural identity, it improves not just our immediate community, but it strengthens the entire city.” 

A rendering of the Market Hall and Cultural Hub that is to be built at 73rd and MacArthur Blvd, East Oakland.

The Market Hall and Cultural Hub design focuses on supporting East Oakland small businesses in the 40x40, rather than the large national outlets that once filled Eastmont Mall, said June Grant, the Market Hall’s lead architect. “The beauty of this story is that we’re providing space for East Oakland entrepreneurs to grow,” Grant said. “We are designing a market that accommodates business owners of all sizes – from those whose initial start-up is best suited for a table at the weekend market, to those who require a stall and others who have grown and stabilized to fit in a retail storefront.”

Grant said when the national chains left Eastmont Mall during hard times, they left scores of local residents unemployed – and never cared about the consequences. Creating local development that local residents support will weather and rebound through the economic ups and downs, Grant said. “We’re not creating a space dependent on an ‘anchor tenant,’” Grant said. “We argue that communities are more stable if you invest locally. However, not with large investment directed at a single business entity – but at many entrepreneurs, artists, families, and residents.”

Through the design process, Johnson has adamantly painted the new affordable housing in bold, vibrant colors. “Our neighborhood deserves beautiful, colorful buildings just like the other great neighborhoods in cities worldwide,” Johnson said.