The Oakland Army Base, also known as the Oakland Army Terminal, is a decommissioned

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...

base in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Gov ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...

. The base was located at the

Port of Oakland The Port of Oakland is a major container ship facility located in Oakland, California, in the San Francisco Bay. It was the first major port on the Pacific Coast of the United States to build terminals for container ships. As of 2011 it was the f ...

on Maritime Street just south of the eastern entrance to the

San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge The San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, known locally as the Bay Bridge, is a complex of bridges spanning San Francisco Bay in California. As part of Interstate 80 and the direct road between San Francisco and Oakland, it carries about 260,000 ve ...

. Construction of the base commenced in 1941 as a part of the expanding San Francisco Port of Embarkation which was headquartered at

Fort Mason Fort Mason, in San Francisco, California originated as a coastal defense site during the American Civil War. The nucleus of the property was owned by John C. Frémont and disputes over compensation by the United States continued into 1968. In 18 ...

on the

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

waterfront. Initially named the ''Oakland Sub-Port of the San Francisco Port of Embarkation'', the base was renamed the Oakland Army Base in 1944. The installation moved in excess of 8.5 million tons of cargo during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, and 7.2 million tons of cargo passed through the terminal during the

Korean War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Korean War , partof = the Cold War and the Korean conflict , image = Korean War Montage 2.png , image_size = 300px , caption = Clockwise from top: ...

. In 1946, the Oakland Army Base expanded to incorporate the administrative and cantonment area of the Port formerly known as Camp John T. Knight in honor of World War I Brigadier General John Thornton Knight. In 1955 the ''San Francisco Port of Embarkation'' became the ''U.S. Army Transportation Terminal Command Pacific'', and the Oakland Army Base became the Oakland Army Terminal. In 1964 the headquarters of the command moved from Fort Mason to the Oakland Army Terminal, and in 1966 the terminal was renamed back to the Oakland Army Base. During the Vietnam War, Oakland Army Base served as a major transit station for U.S. soldiers en route to and returning from all deployment locations in East Asia—such as Vietnam and Korea. The base decommissioned on September 30, 1999. In 2007, th
Oral History Center
of

The Bancroft Library The Bancroft Library in the center of the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, is the university's primary special-collections library. It was acquired from its founder, Hubert Howe Bancroft, in 1905, with the proviso that it retai ...

at the University of California, Berkeley, in partnership with the City of Oakland and the Port of Oakland, commenced a comprehensiv
oral history project
documenting the history of the Base from when it was commissioned in 1941 to when it was shut down in 1999, and thereafter.

Redevelopment

The city of Oakland has proposed a US$1billion redevelopment plan for the base. The

California Transportation Commission The California Transportation Commission (CTC) is an independent government transportation commission established in 1978. The CTC replaced and assumed the responsibilities of four prior independent agencies, the California Highway Commission, ...

has set aside US$240million in funding for the proposal, which would transform the site into a warehousing and logistics center for the

. In 2008, the City of Oakland issued a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) to find a developer to undertake the redevelopment of the site. Thirteen developers submitted proposals and four were selected as finalists. Largely due to the downturn of the US economy, two of the four development interests dropped out of the process, leaving Federal Realty and AMB/CCG JV competing. In 2010 the Oakland City council selected AMB/CCG to enter into an exclusive negotiating agreement. In June 2012 the council accepted the terms of a Lease Disposition and Development Agreement with California Capital and Investment Group (CCIG) and Prologis. (CCG principals had incorporated, and AMB property corporation had merged with Prologis.) Under this arrangement CCIG will perform all of the master planning, public infrastructure work, rail and wharf improvements while Prologis will provide warehouse and logistics facilities. The first phase of the project, slated to break ground in mid-2013, is estimated to cost a total of $484 million, of which $247 million is for public infrastructure. On October 21, 2020, the Judge John Sutter Regional Shoreline park opened to the public on the former site of the base, at the foot of the Bay Bridge.

References

{{Authority control Closed installations of the United States Army History of Oakland, California Military facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area