Lead role in revival
Actor Pierce plans housing, retail project in Richmond
“Richmond has everything you’d want in a community, so it’s just mining those resources and assets.” Wendell Pierce
Actor Wendell Pierce, known for his roles in “The Wire,” “Selma” and other dramas, is diving into the Bay Area real estate market by planning a massive housing and retail project on a site in downtown Richmond that has long been blighted.
Pierce — who has invested in economically challenged areas of New Orleans and Baltimore — told The Chronicle that he chose Richmond for his latest venture because the city has a diverse population and the development site is close to a transit hub, the waterfront and the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts.
The actor said that a visit Wednesday to the site at Macdonald Avenue during a music festival helped cement his commitment to the city.
The two-block-long development would be a short walk from the Richmond BART and Amtrak station. The project would include multiple buildings and commercial space on the ground floor for local businesses and tech incubators, Pierce said. Of the 400-plus units of housing, some will be affordable or subsidized.
Pierce built homes in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and an apartment complex in Baltimore following riots over the police-custody death of Freddie Gray. But Richmond would be his largest single project yet.
“We knew we could make a significant impact if we stepped off the sidelines and actually invested in parts of our community that aren’t being served,” he told The Chronicle. “Richmond has everything you’d want in a community, so it’s just mining those resources and assets.”
Although he once lived in San Francisco and traveled around the region, Pierce said his experience with Richmond was limited up until the city’s Office of Economic Development contacted his development group. The outreach, Pierce said, made him want to invest in Richmond, rather than Oakland or other nearby cities.
“I was ashamed to know that I’d lived in the Bay Area and not visited the waterfront and downtown core of Richmond,” he said.
The city-owned site on Macdonald Avenue from 11th to 13th streets has been slated for redevelopment and mostly vacant since 2005.
The first developer to win a bid to build at the site, Oakland-based A.F. Evans Co., went bankrupt during the recession before anything could be erected. Gov. Jerry Brown’s dissolution of redevelopment agencies in 2011 put the project and others in the corridor in flux, said Amanda Elliott, executive director of Richmond Main Street, a nonprofit working to revitalize the area.
“There’s a lack of retail in the downtown corridor,” Elliott said. “Residents who have been here have been lacking services for more than a decade.”
She said that despite increased interest in the area, “for whatever reason, Richmond doesn’t come to mind when people think of opening a business.”
Last spring, the city sought new proposals for the Macdonald and 12th Street site and subsequently chose Pierce and the firm he is partnering with, SA+A Development, to develop the site. Richmond officials and business leaders hope the project will galvanize other housing and retail ventures in the area.
Keba Konte, founder of Red Bay Coffee in Oakland, called the area a “coffee desert” and said he is going to open a store at Pierce’s Richmond project. He said his roastery is already working on outfitting a converted shipping container — how its specialty coffee is sold — for the site.
The development team is considering creating affordable housing units specifically for artists, Pierce said. His partner, Ernst Valery, said they are looking at creating an outdoor amphitheater for the arts center as well.
“Prices are out of control in the Bay Area,” Valery said. “You have one-bedrooms that go for $3,800. That didn’t make sense to me. There’s a lot we can do to be inclusive and help the existing shops and community there.”
Pierce said he will also offer an apprenticeship program, similar to one he created in Baltimore, for anyone who wants to be trained in development. In Maryland, he said, the program provided locals with employment and instruction, with the idea that Pierce and his partners would invest in future undertakings by their pupils.
“We want to create a cohort of local folks in Richmond who can redevelop other sites so there’s no blight in the city,” Valery said.
The project could break ground in the next year after securing necessary approvals from the City Council in the coming weeks.