In 2012, Head-Royce School was presented with an opportunity to purchase the former Lincoln Child Center (located across the street at 4368 Lincoln Avenue) to create additional learning spaces that further support the educational goals, strategic vision and core values of the School. In February 2013, the school completed the purchase of the property.

The South Campus Plan—which has now been approved by the City of Oakland—incorporates years of detailed feedback we have received from neighbors, which helped us identify innovative solutions to top areas of neighborhood concern, including process/transparency, traffic/parking, facility use, noise and neighborhood character. In particular, we have worked hard to address our neighbors’ longstanding concerns around traffic congestion on Lincoln and eliminating use of what has become known as the “Alida Loop.” 

Specifically, the Plan creates a new internal Loop Driveway which will direct all school pick-up and drop-off traffic and parking onto the South Campus rather than relying on Lincoln Avenue and nearby neighborhood streets. The South Campus Plan will be transformative for the student experience at Head-Royce, yet it exercises a light touch from a construction-and-use standpoint. We hope you will visit the school’s South Campus Plan website for more details about how these plans will benefit our students.

In February, the City of Oakland released the Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) on the project which found that all environmental impacts from the project can be reduced to a level of “less than significant” with standard conditions of approval and mitigation measures. We believe the FEIR’s conclusions point to the thoughtfulness and care that went into developing this plan. You can learn more about the key findings here.

Thanks to the community’s widespread support, the South Campus Plan was unanimously supported by the Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board and approved by the Planning Commission in the Spring. The project was appealed, and the appeal was denied by the Oakland City Council in September 2023, who provided their unanimous approval of the Plan, paving the way for the school to break ground in the fall of 2023.