Canner, Ships, Railroad Shaped Alameda’s North Shore

In Part 1 of this story, we saw how the Alaska Packers purchased property on Alameda’s north shore, created a basin for its ships, and used this basin until 1929. We also saw how Alaska Packers became part of California Packaging, better known as “Calpak.”  We ended the story before Calpak stepped in and changed Alameda’s landscape. This week we’ll have a look at what happened after Calpak decided to build a terminal and a warehouse and how that influenced a local railroad that the City of Alameda had created using profits from its thriving electric company.

In 1918, the City of Alameda created a railroad with trains that ran along a “belt” created by Clement Avenue. The trains ran as far as Grand Street . In 1924, Calpak excavated enough land to the west of the Alaska Packers’ ships to create a second basin for a planned terminal. The company also drew up plans to build a warehouse south of the terminal to store canned goods it had prepared for shipping.

The City of Alameda made two important decisions in 1924. First, it decided to extend the belt line as far as Sherman Street, just west of Calpak’s planned storage facility.  Then, on December 15, 1924, the City sold its six-year-old railway to the Western Pacific Railroad and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway for $30,000. A month later, the new owners incorporated its new railroad as the Alameda Belt Line.

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Our next walking tour along Alameda’s North Shore will give us a first-hand look at how the Alaska Packers Association and California Packing Corporation shaped the Brooklyn Basin into a center of commerce that included a pioneering harbor and a successful railroad. Join us on Sunday, August 11 at 10 a.m. as we discuss the evolution of this shoreline from commerce to a residential area and get to know a company that has played a leading role in developing embedded software used in industries that include aerospace, telecommunications, and robotics. Tickets are $20 each. Visit our Walking Tours page for more information.

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Calpak opened Warehouse 48 in 1928. The company later renamed the 240,000-square-foot facility “Del Monte” for its premium brand. That same year, the railroad created a yard for its trains across Sherman Street, the site of today’s Jean Sweeney Open Space Park .

Calpak and the Alameda Belt Line’s operations thrived despite the Great Depression. During World War II, Encinal Terminals served as the General Navy Supply Depot for the South Pacific. The Navy used the docks to ship aviation fuel, tanks, trucks, guns, ammunition, and relief supplies.

The Navy built housing for its married non-commissioned officers across Buena Vista Avenue from the Del Monte warehouse. Those buildings were torn down to create a parking lot for Calpak’s employees. That space now houses Littlejohn Park.

In 1959, a high-speed container-handling gantry crane at Encinal Terminals replaced the maritime workers, called longshoremen, who had been loading and unloading cargo there. Over the next six years, shipping expansion at the Port of Oakland eclipsed activity at Encinal Terminals, and business faded. Distribution operations were relocated to San Leandro and the Port of Oakland , among other locations.

Del Monte had plans to close the terminals and warehouse in the early 1970s. The company was hoping to develop its property but learned of the limitations it would face with the 1973 passage of Measure A, a ban on new apartments and condos. They put the real estate up for sale.

In 1976, businessman Chengben (Peter) Wang’s Pan America Industries purchased Encinal Terminals and the Del Monte Warehouse property—the $8.2 million price tag included the warehouse east of Entrance Way (later home to Chipman Moving & Storage), as well as the port facilities. In1980, Pan America was so confident of the terminal’s success that it ordered a second container shipping crane.

The hoped-for business did not materialize. In 1987, Wang had both cranes dismantled and sold them to the Port of Nanjing in China. Business at the terminals dried up and, without much fanfare, the Encinal Terminals closed up shop as a shipping facility in 1993.

In 2004, Trident Partners purchased the seven-acre Chipman Moving & Storage property with its 138,000-square-foot warehouse, which had been built on farmland in 1940. Stokely Foods, Del Monte, and Chipman occupied the building in turn. Chipman used the warehouse from 1993 to 2004, when it moved to Zephyr Avenue in Hayward. Trident’s plans to build a 69-unit subdivision never materialized, and the company sold the property to a larger developer, Lennar, for $17 million.

The year 2013 brought significant changes to these properties. Lennar demolished and carted away the remnants of the Chipman warehouse that year. The developer also laid Ohlone and Sakas streets through from Buena Vista Avenue to the newly minted Clement Avenue and built homes on the site.

Wang declared bankruptcy in 2013. Tim Lewis Communities purchased both the Del Monte warehouse and Encinal Terminal sites in the bankruptcy sale. Tim Lewis “flipped” the Del Monte property to Wood Partners in 2017.

Two years later, Wood presented plans to build “Alta Buena Vista,” today’s “Alta Star Harbor,” on the site. Construction there is near completion. On July 27, 2023, the state of California gave Tim Lewis the nod to develop the Encinal Terminals site.

Wind River

The Wind River property takes up the last piece of our North Shore puzzle. Encinal Terminals used the eastern side of this real estate for its cranes. Rails also carried goods through this property to a wharf, whose remnants are still visible near the Encinal Yacht Club.

In 1997, Wind River Systems made headlines with the use of its operating system in the Mars Pathfinder mission. The company was leasing space in Marina Village and was looking for a place it could call its own. The City of Alameda approved Wind River’s plans for a four-building campus. In 2001, the company moved in.

In 2009, Intel acquired Wind River in an $884 million deal designed to improve Intel’s position in embedded software. In 2016, Intel announced that it intended to fully integrate Wind River into one of its divisions. This ended Wind River’s status as a wholly owned subsidiary.

On April 1, 2018, Wind River announced that it had been sold to TPG Capital. The following year, TPG put Wind River’s campus up for sale. The investment firm reinvented the property as “Regatta Commons” and hired a landscape architect, tasking the company with “refreshing (the property) for prospective clients.”

DRA Advisors and Local Capital Group purchased “Regatta Commons” and added it to its portfolio, which contains 950,000 square feet of the 1.4 million square feet of leasable property in the “Commons” and its larger neighbor, Marina Village.

Over a period of 120 years, an uninhabited marshy shoreline had morphed first into a commercial landscape with a railroad and various cannery and shipping businesses and then into a residential area with an attractive open space and research park nearby.

Dennis Evanosky is the award-winning Historian of the Alameda Post . Reach him at dennis@alamedapost.com . His writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Dennis-Evanosky .

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