Oakland (Special to ZennieReport.com) – When the Port of Oakland Board of Commissioners approved the totally silly idea of changing Oakland Airport’s name to include “San Francisco”, the hue and cry from many Oaklanders was “What the hell are you doing?” To this blogger, me, that idea represented the latest example of how Oakland has literally ran away from doing real economic development. You know, the kind that results in investors putting money in developers’ buildings being built? That kind?
Oakland has basically zero economic activity in the way of new investment in new buildings. The problem is so bad that the Design Review Board has canceled its meetings the majority of times this year (and the last) because, as the documents say, there’s not enough items on the agenda to meet about. In other words, no new buildings. Don’t you think the first thing Oakland should have done was, well, form incentives to build?
Good idea, huh?
Not in Oakland, where City and Port of Oakland officials send the message that they just don’t want to do any real work. Sorry, I know its harsh, but do you like what’s going on? No? Then someone’s got to be honest and raw and to the point. Might as well be me, because I am totally tired of crap like this, the massive bullshit that comes with it, and the lack of concern for the people who are harmed by it. So far, all the Port of Oakland has done is waste money on lawyers. Nice going.
I’m also exhausted with the City officials constantly patting themselves on the back on Linkedin. Look, do all that crap when you’ve done something big and extraordinary. Cheering for grant money secured, which is supposed to be a normal thing, is has to stop. Save the champagne cork-popping for a real, game changing, economic development project that’s finished.
The Name Change Was Barbara Leslie’s Very Bad Idea
When Barbara Leslie floated the bad idea, she said “The Port is considering a name modification to boost inbound travelers’ geographic awareness of the airport’s location on the San Francisco Bay. This will protect our airport’s over 30,000 good-paying, direct jobs and $1.6 billion in economic impact on the region.”
I wrote that “Wow. Obviously, Barbara, and by extension the current people who sit on the Port of Oakland Commission, have completely forgot that the Port’s response to economic problems in Oakland has always been to develop its economy.”
And what’s sad is this approach just looks like the product of, again, just plain laziness. Rather than come up with a development plan for a specific use, the Port of Oakland has to, well, piss off San Francisco and the minders of the San Francisco International Airport, who then offer a solution, only to get stiff armed by the Port’s brass, so we wind up getting sued by them. And what happened in court? The predictable: we lost.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Hixson on Tuesday sided with San Francisco, observing that S.F. is likely to prevail in the pending court case on the claim that the name change adding San Francisco “falsely implies affiliation, connection and association” between the two airports, which go by the three-letter codes of SFO and OAK. Hixson said “Because in the United States the name of a city is normally in the name of an airport only if the city owns or partially owns that airport, the new name for the Oakland airport strongly implies affiliation with San Francisco and the San Francisco International Airport.”
The Port of Oakland, which oversees the city’s airport, in a statement that they “are continuing to review the recent ruling and considering all available options.”
All available options? How about this: PUNT. Stop this crap. Why is the Port Board of Commissioners so damn myopic of late? Why do they act like they see the World from between their legs, bent down, looking backward? And now, I turn my ire to John Albrecht, the Port of Oakland Manager of Aviation Marketing and Communications. Why?
John Albrecht Is Another Enabler Of Barbara Leslie’s Bad Idea
Because John is one of the Port of Oakland brass who, along with Barbara, green-lit this bad idea and then had the total nerve to tell me that it was done because the Port of Oakland didn’t have the money to support economic development plans like building a much-needed hotel complex at the Port of Oakland Airport. He wrote that take to me even though the Port of Oakland has separate tax increment financing power from the City of Oakland!
And yes, that is John holding his award from the Airports Council International. It’s an award for marketing – not economic development.
The Port has a lot of financial flexibility that it does not use, but John Albrecht thinks we’re doing a good job. I beg to differ. If the Port of Oakland brass are subject to recall, it’s something we need to consider. We need a change of minds.
Sorry, but this has gone way too far. We need to make the Port of Oakland get back to the basics of economic development and job creation. And that’s that.