Ghost Ship Warehouse Site to Become Low-Income Housing
Unity Council is planning a five-story apartment complex at 3073 International Boulevard, site of 2016’s deadly Ghost Ship fire. The project would completely redevelop much of the block where 36 people lost their lives. In place of the burned-out warehouse and an unused structure nearby, twin five-story apartment buildings connected by a skybridge over the courtyard. Unity Council is a local Bay Area developer that bought the site in 2023. Their goal: transform the tragic lot into a “walkable community.”
Background: the Ghost Ship fire
Between 11:15 and 11:20 PM on December 2, 2016, a fire began at the Ghost Ship warehouse. A party featuring local house music artists like Nackt and Cherushii was in its first hours on the second floor. An anonymous source close to the tragedy told Broke-Ass Stuart parties at Ghost Ship rarely exceeded fifty attendees. The event page for this particular party however had allegedly over 1,000 RSVPS on Facebook.
The fire reportedly advanced so fast that ground-floor residents had to outrun the blaze in order to save their lives. Initially, with no sprinkler system or fire alarms, partygoers did not know they were in danger until they saw smoke and heard the drowned-out shouts of “Fire!” from people fleeing.
Overloaded electrical circuits likely sparked the fire, but the smoke and labyrinthine warehouse layout is what sealed victims’ fates. The ground floor had been partitioned off using unconventional objects to create individual units. Items included but were not limited to wooden pallets, doors, bed frames and headboards, railings, bench backs and chairs, pianos, canvas, drapery, full-sized motorhomes and sections of old trailers, corrugated sheet metal, tree limbs and stumps, logs, rugs, blankets, banners, tarps, mattresses and window frames.
In short, an extreme fireload.
According to CBS, once the wood-pallet stairs to the second floor burned up, nobody else made it down. Our anonymous source said many did reach the ground level. Indeed, 29 of the 36 victims were discovered on the first floor, lost in the smoke-filled, maze-like layout. Our source tells us that “a bricked exit is where most of the bodies were found.” Their way out had apparently been sealed shut.
One sole comfort was learning that victims succumbed to toxic smoke before flames reached them.
Aftermath and beyond
Six years after the blaze and days following Unity Council’s property acquisition, the burned-out warehouse was quietly torn down. A vacant foundation is all that remains. “We did not take this decision lightly for sure,” said Unity Council CEO Chris Iglesias to The Mercury News in May of 2023. “We’ll give this land much-needed care moving forward, the whole time being sensitive to the families. We just want to be really, really thoughtful in this process and just understand what a tragic event this was to them.”
Attorney Mary Alexander (Mary Alexander & Associates, P.C.), representing victims’ families, is happy the site will honor the lives lost. Ms. Alexander described the Unity Council’s approach as “very sensitive—extraordinarily so—to the families and what they thought about it.” Her clients are reportedly satisfied with the decision to convert the property into low-income housing. She expects the developers to follow through with plans to install a memorial on site.
Ms. Alexander says, “The families are very pleased with who bought it because they’re going to make it into low-income housing. It’s hard to imagine a better use—that’s how the Ghost Ship developed, because kids couldn’t afford apartments and were living in irregular places. So they’re very pleased.”
An estimated 25 people rented space from Almena’s Ghost Ship. All but one resident survived. The burn scar in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood has a new future, one that honors the past by housing similarly struggling residents. The completed structure is to provide fifty-eight units for “households earning at or below 80% of the Area Median Income.”
“I’m glad it’s gone,” said Mrs. Colleen Dolan, whose daughter Chelsea Faith (@Cherushiimusic), perished in the now-demolished warehouse. “I think it took too long. I wish I could have watched it come down and just said, ‘good riddance.’”
11/4/2024, 3:10 PM PST: This is a developing story. A civil lawsuit regarding the case has just concluded. More details to come.
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