Lake Merritt-Oakland Estuary Channel Project / Overview and History / Phases I-V

Left: New 10th St. bridge over the Lake Merritt channel, circa 2018.

Right: Phase V: Preliminary Concept Studies: 10th St. Bridge - A-F / Lake Merritt Channel / Oakland, CA, 5/18/2018, John Roloff.



Spring 2006: The artist-team, Lewis deSoto/John Roloff, have been selected by a public art process orchestrated by the Oakland Publ Art Program to work with The City of Oakland,
Sasaki Associates, ASLA,and Rajappan and Meyer Consulting Engineers for the Measure DD: Lake Merritt - Oakland Estuary Channel Project Design Team

The Lake Merritt-Oakland Esturary Channel connects Oakland's Lake Merritt with the Oakland Esturary and flows through the campus of Laney College.
The Oakland Esturary is bounded by the shorelines of the City of Oakland and the Island of Alameda on the eastern edge of San Francisco Bay.
The Channel's water, animated by tide, climate and hydrologic control, is a changing mixture of saline Pacific Ocean/San Francisco Bay
water and fresh water collected from the streams of the Oakland/Berkeley hills that flow into Lake Merritt.

The original mandate for the design team was to conceptually explore the channel site and to create programming and possible artwork projects.
The design team was paid for conceptual ideas for the channel site, resulting in Phase II Design Studies.

It was later discovered that Measure DD required the funds to be used for a constructed project. The design team then channeled their energies towards
constructed projects, resulting in numerous re-designs of Phase III and IV proposals. The LED 10th St bridg concept was approved by the PAAC in 2011.

Sometime in later 2012, Lewis decided to withdraw from the project, Roloff decided to continue working on the design.
Meetings at the construction trailers for the bridge beginning in 2017. Preliminary Phase V concepts were developed and presented to
the DD Coallition in May, 2018, a subsequent visit to Walter Hood's Oakland studio, who is designing a project adjacent to the 10th St Bridge.
Contract discussions for Phase V were held into August, 2018.

Since August 21, 2018, the project was placed on hold by the Public Art Program, City of Oakland for unknown reasons.
Roloff is still awaiting information about the resumption of contract discussions for Phase V of the 10th St. Bridge project.

Additional information can be found at:
Preliminary Concepts/Research & Phase II Designs
Phase III & IV
http://www.sotolux.net
http://www.johnroloff.com