On March 13th, members of the grass roots neighborhood organization, No OHA/Save the Courthouse filed an appeal of the Oakland Planning Commission’s decision to grant developer Trammel-Crow and Oakland’s Housing Authority the permit to demolish the historic Courthouse building on 2935 Telegraph and pave the way for the OHA to construct a housing project.

Members of the community were concerned that the with the last minute deal by Trammel-Crow to go back on it’s early promises of building a market rate project and sell the project to Oakland’s Housing Authority without sufficient public input or process led them along with the idea of saving this landmark, to file an appeal.

The planning commsion’s 3-1 vote surprised many as proper process was not followed. Commissioner Boxer, raised questions that the commision and its staff were not informed in time to have reports and pertinent information in front of them to make a proper decision at the time of the March meeting.