A nonprofit run by the former Black Panther Party chair who is suing Oakland and one of its council members for $7 million stands to receive a generous gift from the city: land in West Oakland worth $1.4 million.

The City Council is on track to sign a development deal to either donate the city-owned land to Elaine Brown’s group, Oakland and the World Enterprises, or lease it to the group for several decades, for what housing chief Michele Byrd said would be a “nominal fee.”

“It will put to use a property that’s been blighted for 20 years, and revitalize it,” Byrd said of Brown’s plan to build a mixed-income apartment building, fitness center, juice bar, technology space, and grocery store on the property at Seventh and Campbell streets, which she has already converted into an urban farm, tended by former prison inmates.

To Byrd and other officials, the project is attractive on many fronts. There’s a lot of interest in providing jobs for formerly incarcerated people in Oakland, and urban gardening is a trend with staying power. Brown’s idea is so enticing that the city may ultimately chip in $4.1 million — an estimate that includes the value of the land and a $2.6 million loan Brown has sought to build affordable housing.

Back to Gallery Oakland council on track to provide land to ex-Panther... 3 1 of 3 Photo: Michael Short, Special To The Chronicle 2 of 3 Photo: Michael Short, Special To The Chronicle 3 of 3 Photo: Michael Short, Special To The Chronicle





The land deal could go before the council as early as this month, even as the city prepares to joust with Brown, 73, in Alameda County Superior Court. The former Panther leader filed a lawsuit in April, alleging that Councilwoman Desley Brooks, 54, punched her at a popular downtown restaurant last year, during an argument over the project. Brown said she suffered head injuries, bruises, and a “massive rotator cuff tear” that required surgery at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland as a result of the Oct. 30 incident at Everett & Jones.

Lawsuit over fight

Brown seeks $6 million from Brooks and $1 million from the city of Oakland, claiming the fight stemmed from official city business. She claims, further, that Brooks threatened to block her bid for funding to build affordable housing on the property.

Brooks did not return phone calls, and has not yet commented publicly on the accusations. The Alameda County district attorney decided not to press criminal charges against her.

Brooks’ attorney, Dan Siegel, said his client’s version of events starkly contrasts with the account that unfolds in Brown’s lawsuit.

“Ms. Brooks’ recollection and memory of what occurred is that Ms. Brown was the aggressor in this conversation,” he said. “She was very loud and abusive, would not take ‘no’ for an answer, continued to pursue Ms. Brooks verbally and physically, and ultimately fell over a chair as they were involved in a conversation.”

“One important point,” Siegel added, “is that Ms. Brooks is a teetotaler. Ms. Brown is not.”

Siegel said he did not yet know whether Brooks planned to recuse herself from the forthcoming council vote to approve the development deal with Brown’s nonprofit.

“I imagine that she would,” he said.

Other council members and civic leaders have largely kept mum about the city’s legal entanglement with Brown. Yet some of them are quick to praise her West Oakland project.

“The reality is the project is good, and it lives on despite whatever personal disputes are going on,” said former Mayor Jean Quan, who in 2014 helped Brown secure a license to clean up the lot and turn it into a large garden.

Vegetables and flowers

Once barren and choked with weeds, the parcel is now lined with neatly arranged vegetable beds. Some are filled with flowers — roses and bright orange chrysanthemums that bristle against the stark landscape. A crew of former offenders comes three mornings a week to pick the vegetables and sell them to local vendors.

Now, Brown wants to build up to 70 apartments on the site, along with a slew of other businesses run by Oakland and the World Enterprises.

To Quan, the project fits into a larger plan to revitalize an area of West Oakland that once bustled with shops and nightclubs, then went through a decades-long period of decline. It was scarred in the 1950s by a double-decker freeway that would eventually collapse in the Loma Prieta earthquake, and its main street was all but decimated to make way for the West Oakland BART Station in 1974.

“I actually knew that neighborhood when it was lively,” said Quan, who tutored children in West Oakland while she attended UC Berkeley in the 1960s.

Brown, who chaired the Black Panther Party from 1974 to 1977, after Huey Newton’s tenure, told The Chronicle that she intends to turn her real estate development into a social model and incubator. “We’re trying to create businesses for people,” she said.

She refused to answer questions about her lawsuit against Brooks and the city.

Zack Wasserman, Brown’s attorney for the development who also sits on the board of Oakland and the World Enterprises, said he thinks the lawsuit and the land deal should be treated as “totally separate issues.” He said Brown’s project was under way long before her spat with Brooks.

“The lawsuit hasn’t come up, it hasn’t gotten in the way,” Wasserman said of his client’s negotiations with the city’s housing department.

Process delayed

The prospective deal was supposed to go before the council’s Economic Development Committee last week but was withdrawn at Brown’s request, according to Byrd, the city’s director of housing and community development.

“The pulling of the item has nothing to do with the lawsuit,” Byrd said. Staff reports from her office recommend that the city sign an agreement to turn the land over to Brown. They make no mention of the ongoing litigation.

But Siegel said it doesn’t make sense for Oakland to do business with someone the city is fighting in court.

“If I were running the city,” he said, “I would say, ‘Let’s make peace and resolve our disputes before we talk about making an award like this.’”

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: rachelswan