Future of Development throughout Oakland
Today's San Francisco Chronicle has an article about the Oakland Mayoral race and the various candidates stances on future development. My favorite quote from the article was from Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown:

"In most of the places where there are now new buildings, there was nothing there. It was dirt, and that doesn't provide for more cafes, retail shops and eyes on the street."

Wow! It's just too bad that most of the development here in the Jack London District isn't being built with PROPER retail spaces, much less restaurant spaces. Rather than more sandwich-serving cafe's (which I enjoy and utilize), more restaurants would make the area more attractive and create more activity, which might not actually be wanted at night because of noise issues. Unfortunately, no developer has been willing to take on that task since Fourth Street Lofts. As for retail space, the developers of Allegro (not the current owner) were required to put retail space in and what a disaster that turned out to be. Most of the spaces are just not the right size or layout for a retail store and have been empty for four years now or have been rented as office space. Other mixed-use spaces in Sierra have been hijacked for retail - for the good of the community. It will be interesting to see what happens on the ground floor of the four upcoming buildings, but sorry, no spaces within the four new projects will become a restaurant unless someone is willing to spend huge bucks on rebuilding later. This is due to venting issues, parking, trash, and sink drains.

The Chronicle article is actually about Oakland's mayoral race, which has gotten a bit more interesting with Dellums being added to the mix. In the article they quote Dellums as saying, "10,000 new residents are not enough to revitalize the city" and that, "the city needs homes to bring in 50,000 new residents." De la Fuente would most likely continue to be gung-ho on development, while Nancy Nadel would probably be a bit more conservative, although one wonders what support for that she would have with City Council.

When considering the Jack London District and all the possibilities, what kind of places do you think of? Send your responses to editor@jacklondonnews.com and we'll follow up with local businesses to get their take on why the area doesn't have you're looking for. The most likely reasons are overhead costs, parking, and not yet enough people. At some point a few factors will change enough to appeal to more entrepreneurs.
Posted 1/20/2006