HIA Archive: Oak to Ninth Avenue Health Impact Assessment - HIA Clearinghouse and Information Center

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HIA Archive : Oak to Ninth Avenue Health Impact Assessment

Oak to Ninth Avenue Health Impact Assessment
Authors: UC Berkeley Health Impact Group
Date: May 2006

Links HIA Report: http://ehs.sph.berkeley.edu/hia/O2N.HIA.FullDraft.pdf Background Reports: Bhatia R. Oak to Ninth Avenue Waterfront Development Project Health Impact Assessment Contact Rajiv Bhatia, MD, MPH 1390 Market Street, Ste. 822 San Francisco, CA 94102 415-252-3982 Email:

Summary of the HIA *

Policy or Project
Owned by the Port of Oakland, Oak to Ninth is a proposed development project consisting of approximately 64 acres including 3,100 residential units, 200,000 square feet of commercial space, 3,500 structured parking spaces, 29.9 acres of public open space, two renovated marinas, and a wetlands restoration area.

Background ** and Policy Context
The Oak to Ninth development project was proposed by a private developer to build a mixed use neighborhood on underutilized waterfront industrial site. The Oakland Planning Commission and Oakland City Council were the decision-making organizations involved in this project. The HIA was conducted separately from the environmental impact assessment by students in a health impact assessment course at UC Berkeley. The HIA results were communicated prior to and at the public hearings conducted by the Planning Commission and the City Council in March 2006. A final decision by the City Council was made in July 2006.

Scope and Methods
This HIA examines the project’s likely impacts on the following five areas : parks and open space, pedestrian injury, housing, air quality, and noise. This entailed: a review of the development proposal, use of EIS data, and literature searching. Public input and interviews with key stakeholders were also conducted. Data were used for GIS mapping and quantitative forecasting.

Summary of findings
The project would affect 411,000 existing and 7,500 future neighborhood residents, in an impoverished area and high housing costs. Quantitative modeling suggests a loss of 15 acres of open space, pedestrian injuries, sleep disturbances due to ambient noise, unmet housing and school needs, and health effects of particulate matter.

Key recommendations from the analysis were to: incorporate new public routes to waterfront park, add traffic calming, lower speed limits, and other pedestrian safety measures, and notify potential buyers of air quality risks.

Updated 06/23/2009

* The HIA-CLIC website and this summary were developed by the UCLA Health Impact Assessment (UCLA-HIA) Project with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Every effort has been made to ensure that these summaries are factually accurate. HIA authors have been given an opportunity to review summaries before posting. HIA authors may notify us of any factual inaccuracies or updates by filling out a Request for Update form (click for pop-up form).

** Readers interested in more detail, including literature citations, for the background summarized here are encouraged to view the full HIA report (see external link above), or to review the relevant Pathway section of HIA-CLIC.