Anyone can see Oakland is going through a transformative economic boom.

The scaffolding and plastic wrapped buildings — symbols of investment — are waiting to be unveiled. But, you don’t have to drive too far to see that not all of Oakland is booming. Parts of East Oakland look bleak.

How can that be?

“There’s such a lack of investment,” said Liam Chinn, the executive director of Restore Oakland, a nonprofit organization that is opening shop in the area. “I don’t see fresh food. I don’t see opportunity anywhere.”

Thankfully, that’s about to change.

After years of big talk about bringing economic investment to East Oakland, it’s finally happening because Restore Oakland, a collaborative of social justice organizations, decided to band together and make it happen.

Restore Oakland is seeking to change East Oakland’s fortunes by opening a community advocacy and training center in a renovated building on International Boulevard in the heart of the Fruitvale neighborhood.

The building was purchased by Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, the founding organizations in Restore Oakland. The investment that will have a lasting impact is set to happen inside the building, in what Chinn refers to as a “social justice laboratory.”

The investment will be in the people who live in a part of the city devoid of jobs and economic opportunities. It’s the part of the city where promises of development pile up like trash on street corners. It’s the part of the city where the lack of resources and opportunities has decimated lives.

At Restore Oakland, people will have a place to go and learn skills that will help lift themselves out of poverty.

When the building opens in 2019, there will be a restaurant that will also be a job training site, a space for restorative justice meetings, a business incubator and a tenants rights clinic.

It will be a one-stop shop for a marginalized community.

What’s more, the building owners will provide low-cost rental space for other nonprofit community organizations that have struggled to pay rent and maintain a foothold in the city.

“At a time when not only people are getting pushed out rapidly through gentrification here in the Bay Area, what makes it even more profound in a negative way is that the organizations that are here to fight for them are now also being pushed out,” Chinn said.

Ella Baker, which is focused on breaking incarceration and poverty cycles, has been bouncing around the Bay Area since it was founded 21 years ago. Now the organization has a permanent home — one that it owns.

“We believe that if we’re going to have a strong community we need strong, community-centered institutions,” said Zach Norris, Ella Baker’s executive director.

Ella Baker’s move reminded me of the Greenlining Institute, which purchased and renovated a former bank building on 14th Street in downtown Oakland. Greenlining, which drives economic investments into communities of color, wanted to be anchored in Oakland.

Norris told me that Greenlining mentored Ella Baker during the building-buying process.

“If we aren’t a part of the real estate, then we’re getting displaced,” Norris said. “If we don’t have some level of ownership and stake, it’s that much easier to be displaced.”

Causa Justa/Just Cause will have a tenants’ rights clinic downstairs next to Colors, ROC United’s restaurant and training center for formerly incarcerated people, low-income folks, immigrants and at-risk youth.

La Cocina, a food business incubator primarily for women of color, will open an East Bay location and share the commercial kitchen with ROC United. Other organizations include Community Works West and Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth.

The two-story, 15,000-square-foot building on the corner of 34th Avenue and International Boulevard cost $3 million.

The overall project budget is $16 million. According to Norris, Restore Oakland has raised $11 million through donations from Google, the Novo Foundation and the San Francisco Foundation. Restore Oakland has also received money from Capital One and Telacu through the New Market Tax Credit program, which provides tax credits to private businesses that invest in low-income communities.

“There has been this community recognition that we need restorative justice, and we need economic opportunity to really create safe and equitable communities, but there’s starting to be this broader recognition from a broader set of forces to also see that as being a critical pathway towards a safer Oakland,” Norris said.

What excites me most about Restore Oakland is that there’s going to be so much social and community-focused power under one roof. Just imagine what could be possible if that power were harnessed.

“We have to have deeper collaborative relationships that go beyond typical coalition building, typical movement building where you come together briefly over one issue and then you disband,” said Chinn, whose job will be to act as a liaison between groups.

Housing, employment and educational disenfranchisement — it’s all part of the same economic issue: Communities of color are bereft of opportunity.

East Oakland is long overdue for its own symbol of success.

“I have witnessed the more recent changes that I don’t see benefiting all Oaklanders,” said Norris, who was raised at 56th Avenue and MacArthur Boulevard in East Oakland. “Our vision is to really demonstrate that development can happen in the needs and interests of the community.”

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. normally appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr