OAKLAND — A developer’s plans to develop a blighted warehouse in West Oakland which has been a point of controversy for years into 102 live/work units are moving forward, with the goal of offering most of the previous tenants a place to live in the new building.

The project at 1919 Market St. has been through many hurdles since developer oWow, run by Danny Haber, purchased it in June 2016; it’s slated to break ground early 2018 and finish within 16 months. Before the purchase, it was red-tagged by the city, causing the previous tenants to have to leave. Haber later had it partially demolished to make way for new construction.

The warehouse was controversial both before Haber bought it and afterward. Before he came in, the warehouse was pervaded with code violations. Before purchasing the building in June, Haber and his team managed the property, and attempted to work with the city to fix the problems over time and keep the tenants living there, he said. But city inspectors deemed the building uninhabitable and red-tagged it.

Critics have accused Haber of using the building’s blighted condition as a reason to kick out the tenants, allowing wealthier tenants to move in once it’s renovated.

Haber, in an interview with the Oakland Tribune, said his company worked with the tenants to relocate them either temporarily or permanently, and shelled out about $200,000 in “relocation packages” to get them housed — before he had actually purchased the building.

“In the end, not everybody’s going to be happy,” Haber said. “But we did it in a way where people could work with us instead of having to do court battles and the city being really angry with us.”

The project is aimed at providing workforce housing — housing for people who make 60 to 120 percent of the area median income, Haber said. The area median income for a one-person household in 2017 was $68,200, according to the city’s website.

Haber said he intends to accomplish that by building “high-density” units with three bedrooms each, allowing families and groups of people to move in.

Real estate agent Kenneth Sessions lived at 1919 Market for years before it was red-tagged, and had operated his businesses out of his loft, he told the Oakland Tribune.

Sessions said he was paying $1,500 a month for his 2,000-square-foot loft, and wouldn’t expect to find anything comparable. He said he’s excited to move back in at an affordable rate, though he may have less space.

“I couldn’t have expected anybody to treat me better,” Sessions said. “They paid me quite a bit of money to relocate and offered me the opportunity to come back.”

Other former tenants weren’t happy with their outcomes. Joy Newhart, who aspired to run a dance studio out of her loft at 1919 Market, was driven to homelessness and had to move out of Oakland when the building was red-tagged, she said at a Planning Commission meeting in October.

“Danny Haber came along and stole my building,” Newhart said. “It took me 13 months to find a place to live. I couldn’t afford to stay in Oakland, I’m no longer living in Oakland. … I want my home back.”

Newhart filed a complaint with the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office in November 2015 over the city ordering gas and electric services to be shut off, she told the Oakland Tribune via email.

Tenants of 1919 Market and oWow’s other developments spoke at that meeting in both support and opposition of the company after a report on the company’s Oakland projects requested by the Oakland Warehouse Coalition was presented.

After the meeting, the planning department approved the design review for the project, Haber said.

The coalition’s executive director Jonah Strauss’ request for the report alleged that Haber and his team removed tenants “with a variety of pressure, buyout and eviction tactics, documented in multiple lawsuits.”

Haber has maintained that his company worked alongside tenants and their lawyers to provide “amicable solutions for relocation,” he said in a written response to Strauss’ letter included in the report. Haber also said relocation fees that were provided to the tenants were “significantly more than is required by city housing regulations,” and that all the tenants’ lawyers signed a statement saying oWow fully complied with them.

Strauss, in the letter, expressed concern over partial demolition of the building “without advance environmental precautions.” Alameda County Environmental Health stopped the construction in October 2016 so that environmental impacts could be investigated.

Haber’s company, per the county’s recommendation, hired an environmental consultant to assess sub-grade contamination and the construction’s effects on the neighborhood.

“We have worked with Alameda County Environmental Health agency in a voluntary remedial action agreement before we even took over the project for well over the last year, spending close to $200,000 in testing and site management plans,” Haber told the Oakland Tribune.

The testing data showed a “relatively low chemical impact,” Haber said in his response letter to the OWC. A few known plumes of tetrachloroethylene, trichloroethylene and benzene were found to be slightly above environmental screening level thresholds, he said.

Nearby residents have expressed mixed feelings about the project and its potential impacts on the neighborhood.

Jon Axtell, who lives across the street, said neighbors’ concerns are both environmental and social.

“There’s a great sense of distrust among certain neighbors of this developer, whether or not they keep their promises, and the lack of any kind of review process,” Axtell said in an interview.

Some neighbors are concerned that the project is intended to house tech workers, who they believe will be there for short stints of time and shift the neighborhood’s demographic, Axtell said.

Haber said that’s not the project’s intent.

“If our goal was to appeal to techies we would have built as many small studio apartments as we could,” Haber said. “However, with our building macro apartments of three bedrooms we can appeal to families, or groups of friends that are local in the neighborhood, affordable workforce housing so we can keep Oakland, Oakland.”

Susan Freeman, whose adult children own homes near 1919 Market, welcomes it. She believes the neighborhood “dodged a bullet” in that the warehouse is being built into workforce housing, and not a market-rate high-rise.

“If somebody else took over, they could have seen it as a valuable piece of land and put up a real monstrosity,” Freeman said. “It couldn’t stay the way it was.”