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When Noni Session first imagined reopening Esther’s Orbit Room, she saw a gleaming new building that would serve as an anchor for a reinvigorated cultural and commercial corridor.
For Session, who was born and raised in West Oakland and is the executive director of the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative, or EBPREC, renovating Esther’s was a chance at a fresh start.
The former blues club had been a staple of the historic Seventh Street district, called the “Harlem of the West,” serving as the center of Black life in West Oakland for roughly half a century. While a series of policy decisions decimated the strip, with dozens of businesses and thousands of homes razed, Esther’s had remained the lone holdout, keeping its doors open until 2011…