On a recent Friday afternoon, the sun was shining, the birds were chirping, the yellow wildflowers were dancing in the breeze and the San Francisco skyline beckoned to be painted from the empty benches at Middle Harbor Shoreline Park.
There wasn’t another human within eyesight.
How could it be that a place so serene, full of color and warmth, with wide open picnic areas and clean restrooms — and a 2½-mile walk on flat pavement — could be so deserted?
One theory is that no dogs are allowed, which may make the area less appealing to anyone with canine companions. Some folks may also be scared off by all the trucks parked across the side of 7th Street, or the giant shipping containers stacked in nearby docks, or the sight of a working harbor giving the feel of an industrial complex not meant for human relaxation.
But all it takes is a simple turn of the head towards the west to catch a glimpse of what makes this place special.
“I come here twice a month,” said Nancy Nadel. “It gives us perspective. It’s so quiet, it gives you a sense of how beautiful it is right here in the Bay Area. We’re so fortunate to have this.”
Still, among the 300 reviews on All Trails, just about everybody mentions how deserted this trail is.
“A piece of paradise,” one reviewer wrote.
“I’m always surprised it’s not crowded,” wrote another.
Nadel is surely one of a few who frequent the area regularly, and she has a good reason to: the two-story observation tower watching over the harbor is named after her late husband, Chappell Hayes.
Former councilmember Nancy Nadel stands next to the plaque of her late husband, Chappell Hayes, at the Middle Harbor Shoreline Park’s Chappell Hayes Observation Tower in Oakland, Calif., on Friday, March 28, 2025. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Built in 2004 to celebrate the life of Hayes, who died of pancreatic cancer a decade earlier at the age of 45, the observation tower sits as a reminder of how far West Oakland has come.
Hayes was born and raised in Indianapolis, where he became the first Black first violinist in his high school’s orchestra, then went on to serve in the Air Force as a computer technician in Nevada. It was there he was arrested for possessing less than 1/100th of an ounce of marijuana, Nadel said, and he served three years in Nevada maximum security prison as a penalty.
He eventually moved to San Francisco, attended community college and established a woodworking shop in his apartment. Selling bookcases, cabinets and stairway bannisters while attending classes, he finished his Master’s degree and graduated with honors from San Francisco State University, where he met Nadel.
Dreaming of using sustainably logged forests to supply wood for a furniture making company that would provide jobs for youths in West Oakland, Hayes completed coursework for a doctoral degree in wood science, but his advisor didn’t share his vision and never approved of his dissertation, Nadel said.
Still, Hayes kept dreaming of guiding children off the streets of Oakland and into employment opportunities where they could learn important trades like woodworking, computer skills and business acumen. With funding from local grants, he started “The Dowelling Jig,” a classroom training program at McClymonds High School that provided training that could lead to part-time jobs and summer employment in the 1980s.
It was his belief that the high rates of youth unemployment in West Oakland was leading many to peddle drugs at high risk for high wages.
“Unless we create alternatives that pay and that people can have pride in, it’s just like throwing our youths to the wolves,” he told the Oakland Tribune at the time.
With the help of $40,000 from the city, and more funding from non-profits and the Oakland Unified School District, Hayes helped set up programs for children to work cleaning up the city, attending to seniors’ yards and gardens, using computer skills to take minutes for organizations that needed youngsters’ help, and woodworking programs that helped many kids develop their own business plans.
He had a passion for helping the community, Nadel said. He also began organizing folks in the West Oakland community, particularly around urban environmentalism.
He fought to stop the transportation of spent nuclear fuel rods through Oakland, as well as improving air quality and reducing pollution.
Perhaps his most notable achievement was after the Cypress Freeway collapsed in the 1989 earthquake.
When it was built in 1957, the Cypress Freeway split the community in half, displacing 600 families, most of them Black and Latino, according to the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project.
“Once the freeway collapsed, Caltrans said they’d hurry up and put it back where it was,” Nadel said. “We said no; we wanted it out of the community. It was right in the middle of West Oakland, it cut it in half. It was making two sides, and it was very hard to cross from one side of the other so it isolated the bay side. You’d never walk across or to the other side, so it was very unpleasant and hard to deal with.”
Former councilmember Nancy Nadel strolls past the Middle Harbor Shoreline Park’s Chappell Hayes Observation Tower in Oakland, Calif., on Friday, March 28, 2025. The observation tower features a dedicated plaque for her late husband, Chappell Hayes. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
There was also the issue of pollution. Trucks going across the freeway were leaving traces of lead from the gas exhaust. Research done by Hayes and others showed a high percentage of children with lead poisoning.
With Hayes’ organizational efforts, the community was able to convince Caltrans to move the Freeway outwards.
The new layout has paved the way for a West Oakland revitalization that has seen such recent developments as the Oakland Ballers and Prescott Market Hall.
“Pollution definitely decreased, the blight is down and the ability to traverse the neighborhoods is improved,” Nadel said. “And now down in the lower part, below West Grand Avenue, is really bubbling now.”
Where the Ballers play at Raimondi Park, “the freeway is not that far from there, we wanted to do it even farther, but access to that neighborhood has improved,” Nadel said. “People can walk over there from other parts of West Oakland. Even from downtown, if they want to take a nice long walk.”
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Among Hayes’ other achievements was helping lead several successful campaigns for public office for his wife, Nadel, who later became a four-term member of the Oakland City Council from 1996 through 2012.
They had one child, Sele Nadel-Hayes, who was 13 when her father died. Their last family vacation was to Jamaica, Nancy Nadel said, and it inspired her to fall in love with Jamaican chocolate.
While working on the city council, she started her own chocolate making business using cocoa beans exclusively from Jamaica.
Now retired, Nadel, 78, spends her time running the Oakland Chocolate Company, babysitting her granddaughter, making art and trying to fight for the community whenever she sees an opportunity to do so.
And, twice a month, she walks down to Middle Harbor Shoreline Park, strolls up to the Chappell Hayes Observation Tower and takes a seat on an empty bench, appreciating the beauty around her.
Feeling again inspired by the heart of her late husband.
“He was a local hero,” she said. “That’s for sure.”
Details: Located at 2777 Middle Harbor Road, Oakland; portofoakland.com.
View of Middle Harbor Shoreline Park’s Chappell Hayes Observation Tower in Oakland, Calif., on Friday, March 28, 2025. The observation tower features a dedicated plaque for former councilmember Nancy Nade’s late husband, Chappell Hayes. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
