The OPDC wants to make Oakland a better place.

A crowd of nearly 250 people gathered last night… The OPDC wants to make Oakland a better place.

A crowd of nearly 250 people gathered last night in the Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral on Dithridge

Street for the kick-off of the OPCD, or Oakland Planning and Development Corporation event Oakland 2025.

OPDC focuses on community improvement through involvement — that is, developing a community strategy to make Oakland a better place in the future — a purpose that is evident in the objective of Oakland 2025.

OPDC will organize what it calls a dialogue-to-change process — a series of small group discussions with the intention of hearing from all the many different interest groups of the Oakland community — to lay out the issues Oakland residents face.

Speaking to the crowded room, OPDC executive director Wanda Wilson said that a collective course for the future was the paramount interest of this process.

“We want all the many diverse voices of Oakland heard, reaching all facets of Oakland. We will be focusing on things dealing from physical improvements, to economic improvements as well,” Wilson said in her speech. “We have been working in unison with a lot of the community-based organizations to really coordinate our efforts and make sure we are all on the same page.”

State Rep. Dan Frankel, D-Pittsburgh, said that the interests of Oakland have not gone unnoticed in Harrisburg.

“Some of you may not know and be surprised to know that Oakland is the third largest economic region in the state right behind Philadelphia and Pittsburgh,” he said.

It was stressed multiple times throughout the meeting that OPDC wants to hear from all members of the Oakland community. That includes students.

Oakland resident and dialogue facilitator Matt Bartko said in his speech, “Most view Oakland through the lens of a city — just people moving through, overrun with students — not so much a community or neighborhood. We are working to change that perception.”

OPDC placed emphasis on the idea that making and maintaining connections between the many different residents of Oakland is a pivotal step in transforming Oakland into a community.

Over the course of the next five weeks, there will be a series of dialogue sessions. The sessions will be once a week and will last two hours. They will provide a way for Oakland residents to explore ways to improve their neighborhood.

These sessions will culminate on May 12 during the “Action Forum” where the groups’ collective ideas will be discussed and lead to the creation of “Action Teams,” which will begin devising ways to enact the desired changes.

Over the summer and fall of 2011, the Action Teams will hold planning workshops, as well as come together with a draft of an overall plan.

The final overall plan will be released in January 2012 with the intention of improvement over the next 10 years and beyond.