OAKLAND — Inside a vacant West Oakland warehouse, a small group of artists and performers pored over blueprints, the building’s cavernous interior dwarfing their compact semi-circle.
Tanya Retherford, an Oakland resident and architectural designer, traced her finger along the renderings, the paper lit by a pool of light streaming in from overhead skylights. There will be 14 bedrooms that double as art studios, she said, a shared work space for residents, four studios for rent, lofts built between ribbed metal trusses, a library, a central kitchen, three bathrooms and an open rehearsal space for the collective’s performing artists.
But the dozen or so members of the Von Trapp Family Circus, the name they gave themselves, hope the space will be more than a collection of live/work studios. The desire is that it will be a salve for wounds suffered in the wake of the Dec. 2 Ghost Ship fire that killed 36 people, when the city lost several of its artist collectives to evictions.
“We are like an antidote to what happened to the Ghost Ship (warehouse),” Retherford said. “We’re really hoping the city sees us as an important project.”
Members of the Trapp received a 30-day eviction notice from another West Oakland warehouse they shared just three days after the deadly fire, when they were still mourning friends who were missing and had yet to be identified by county officials. After media reported their warehouse could be another potential fire hazard, the residents, accustomed to staying quietly under the radar, found themselves thrust uncomfortably into the spotlight.
Like many other warehouses being used illegally as residences, the owners of their former, sprawling Magnolia Street complex, named the Castle Von Trapp, feared another deadly fire would put their tenants’ lives at risk. But they agreed to push the 30-day move-out order to 90 days, while looking to the city for guidance on how to bring the building up to code.
But then the owners received a threatening notice of violation, ordering them to “discontinue residential occupancy,” despite an executive order from Mayor Libby Schaaf directing staff to do the opposite. The residents finally moved out on July 9, splitting up their collective after an unsuccessful bid to buy the property.
And that would have been the end of the Castle Von Trapp and the Von Trapp Family Circus. But, unlike many collectives that disbanded post-eviction, members of the Trapp managed to pull off a miracle in Oakland’s increasingly tight real estate market: They convinced a warehouse owner to let them build out a new live/work space and do it legally.
Their new building’s owner, Oakland resident Carolann Hinkle, who represents a family trust, said her family was apprehensive at first. They were planning to sell a residential property in Berkeley and wanted out of the residential landlord business; commercial space seemed like a logical choice.
“We told our Realtor, ‘This is not what we want,’ but he told us to just think on it,” Hinkle said. “And then it just seemed like something bigger than us, something bigger than a warehouse.”
She continued, “This was really an opportunity to use the warehouse at its fullest potential and … to show the community you can do this, and you can do it right and make it safe.”
The members of the Trapp have a long road ahead, and they admit they expect snags in securing permits or unplanned construction hurdles along the way. They will be using the city’s existing live/work building codes, which a task force led by city staff is in the process of updating. The city expects to have a draft version of the new building codes to present publicly before the end of the year, said Assistant City Manager Claudia Cappio.
Architect Tom Dolan, who is assisting the Trapp in navigating the city’s permitting process and who also serves on the city’s live/work task force, said the committee’s work has stalled in recent months because building and fire officials have so far resisted compromises that may make it more affordable to convert former industrial and commercial spaces to live/work uses.
“Our good ideas have gotten chipped away to the point where what is being proposed, from what I can see, is not any different from today’s live/work code,” he said.
Staff is weighing a complicated set of issues, Cappio said, including how to retrofit buildings that were often constructed more than 50 or 60 years ago and whether requirements, such as mandating building owners install fire sprinklers — which can add tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to a building project — are strong enough protections to keep people safe.
“What will suppress the fire, and how do I get out safely in a manner that everyone in the building knows about,” Cappio said. “Those are the two key issues we’ve been dealing with.”
But members of the Trapp are hopeful. They believe Schaaf, who has long touted the arts community as integral to the city’s “secret sauce,” will direct staff to help artist collectives like theirs that are seeking to follow the city’s rules.
“Because the mayor … vehemently stated she supports the arts, we are hoping we will see a little more support … seeing how we were … a warehouse that was kicked out post-Ghost Ship due to the Ghost Ship fire and the lack of (subsequent) support in the city,” said Trapp member Misha Naiman.
