CAPITAL CAMPAIGN:

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Presently, Oakland & the World Enterprises (OAW) is engaged in a vigorous campaign to raise $10 Million needed to launch and sustain, for at least two years, our businesses at 7th & Campbell: a restaurant, a fitness center, a neighborhood market, a tech center and the reimagined urban farm.

 

BACKGROUND: 

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In 2014, Elaine Brown, former Chairman of the Black Panther Party, founded OAW, a nonprofit organization, in Oakland, California. To realize its Mission of developing cooperatively-owned businesses, OAW acquired a license from the City of Oakland to develop a 32,000 square-foot, three-quarter acre City-owned property in West Oakland, California, on the corner of 7th and Campbell Streets, a lot that had been left abandoned and blighted and vacant by the City for over 30 years. Seventh & Campbell is only a few blocks from the West Oakland BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station—the gateway to San Francisco—and is part of the depressed community of Lower Bottoms, contiguous to the Campbell Village Public Housing project.

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The City license agreement required OAW to build affordable housing as well as its envisioned businesses. Upon possession of the lot, OAW engaged a number of formerly incarcerated people, at $20/hour, to clean and clear the property and establish its first business there, an urban farm, naming it West Oakland Farms.

Ultimately raising all of the final project budget amount of $80 Million, OAW was able to break ground and start construction on the project in late 2022, naming the complex The Black Panther.—Construction is slated for completion in late May 2024.