Having purchased two office buildings in Oakland’s City Center late last year, Strada Investment Group has entered into an exclusive negotiating agreement with the City of Oakland to develop the city-owned parcels behind the 1111 Broadway office building, fronting Clay Street between 11th and 12th.
According to the Business Times, Strada has until January 2015 with a possible six month extension to reach an agreement with the city. And in the eyes of Strada, “the site could accommodate up to 400,000 square feet of mixed-use development such as a combination of hotel, office, residential and retail.”
Shorenstein Properties had proposed building up to 580,000 square feet of office space on the site prior to the last downturn, a building which would have been roughly the size of the 1111 Broadway tower.
Why anyone would choose to live and invest in Oakland is a nightmare.
It’s only a matter of time before the national guard is sent into this war zone.
“How will roaming tanks affect my property values?”
“Why anyone would choose to live and invest in Oakland is a nightmare
It’s only a matter of time before the national guard is sent into this war zone.” -sf
Spoken like someone who knows little to nothing about Oakland. Oakland has plenty of nice neighborhoods, and downtown is one of them generally speaking. In fact, downtown SF is at least as rough as downtown Oakland if not more so (thanks to the Tenderloin and 6th street), yet I’ve never seen anyone here complain about it. Rose-colored glasses or something.
Besides, investment in Oakland is the exact kind of thing that will help the city prosper and lead to lower crime rates(and crime has been dropping already for many years, for the record). This is a good thing for Oakland and the Bay Area, I hope it goes through this time.
If it weren’t for San Francisco and San Jose, Oakland would be worse than Detroit. It’s already almost as bad as Detroit. At least Detroit has some semblance of an automotive industry coming back. So I don’t buy the “SF is just as bad” meme that Oaklanders love to spew.
Oakland is one of the top 3 most desperate, depressed cities in the country. There are great parts of Oakland. But the stuff that goes on there, as evidenced by the video posted above.. it’s in it’s own category of f’d- upness. Oh, but it must be that Oaklanders are so much hipper and cooler to live there because of it. I’d tell myself that too to convince myself to live there.
sf- I agree with you that the economy of Oakland benefits from proximity to SF and Silicon Valley. But I would insert that the inverse is also true. For SF, Marin, the peninsula and Silicon valley to remain the bastions of wealth that they are, middle class workers and poor folks who are essential to supporting all of the wealth must live somewhere, and Oakland is that somewhere. Somehow the geography of the bay makes it so easy for folks in the wealthy west bay to cast off Oakland as though the cities citizens are solely responsible for its crime and other problems. Yet, these are societal problems that happen to be regionally concentrated in Oakland (and Richmond and a few other spots).
Also, have you been to Detroit? Oakland is hardly comparable. There are huge swaths of Oakland that are economically thriving and relatively small swaths that are as bleak as ALL of Detroit is. In fact, the contrast of relative wealth and poverty in Oakland creates a different set of problems than Detroit has, where nearly everyone is economically challenged.
I agree with you that horrible things happen in Oakland a lot. But the privilege that enables some to ignore it, perpetuates the problem by preventing further investment into a great city.
ditto what dogwood said 🙂
Agree the comparison to Detroit is ridiculous. The better, though now trite, comparison is to Brooklyn or Queens – areas that provide needed middle-value housing and lower-cost business districts… but which are not, and will never be, midtown Manhattan.
I think Oakland’s bigger problem (from an economic/development perspective!) is that people only start looking at Oakland when SF and the Peninsual are booming. This creates a spillover effect that starts to make Oakland attractive – lower housing costs, lower office rents, etc. When SF overheats, OAK starts to look good.
But as soon as the SF economy cools, the incentives to look at Oakland vanish and Oakland starts stagnating again. Barring some big change (such as an enormous downtown tax incentive district), Oakland will always be a spillover “also ran” in SF’s orbit.
Oakland bashers are just arrogant pr*cks…plain and simple…yeah Oakland has a lot of crime in parts, but it’s still a nice city…just as S.F. has the bayview, TL, 6th Street, Hunters point etc…grow up you twats.
SF — Hop the ferry get off at Jack London Sq — and visit a place that is not stuck in uber self promotion. It’s interesting, urbane, genuine — and people have hobbies there. What a needed breath of fresh air Oakland is. It’s rising — and yes there are issues. But walk from JLS – downtown, Chinat, Old Oak, Lake Merrit, Grand, BWAY — get lost in the hills.
Did you not hear the gunfire last week on Fulton and Laguna?
SF AS IF
“Did you not hear the gunfire last week on Fulton and Laguna?” -Invented
Judging by statistics, there’s gunfire pretty much every single day in SF. But according to some people, Oakland is the only place in the universe where there’s concentrated crime and poverty. Oh yeah, and Detroit. The comparison is always to Detroit…which has some nice parts too, by the way. Wow, it’s like reality is different from what sensationalized news/tv shows/hollywood movies say! Amazing!
What is the insecurity that leads some smug and apparently quite fearful pricks to bash Oakland with such mindless invective? Does the us-them thing make them feel safer? Do they need to overamplify a nearby horror to feel better about their own, perhaps uncertain, position in the heirarchy of winners and losers?
I’m a middle class and middle aged white gay man; I’ve lived in Oakland since moving to the Bay Area 17 years ago. You know how many times I’ve been murdered? None. You know how many times I’ve been mugged? None. You know how many times I’ve felt threatened walking home from BART? None. You know how many of my neighbors I know and like? All of them. You know how often we look out for each other? All the time. You know how much my 3 bedroom craftsman bungalow about 15 minutes by transit from SF’s retail core cost me 3 years ago? Less than half its current appreaised value. You know the value of living somewhere not overrun by panicked, ignorant suburbanites (yes, “City”, that would be you, too)? Priceless.
Bicycle or walk around Lake Merrit, on a nice warm sunny day. Observe the diverse crowd of non-tourist drones enjoying themselves.
Compare that to the utterly banal tourist crap honky tonk which is Fishermans Wharf, or the stumbling tourist zombies along much of the rest of Embardadero, or the often rotting piers which make up too much of the rest of the vaunted San Francisco shoreline (but don;t let yourself travel too far down into the industrial wasteland) I think the comparison actually favors Oakland.
“Oakland is one of the top 3 most desperate, depressed cities in the country.” LOL. That comment alone is a joke and so misinformed it is not funny.
More importantly however, why the need to bash Oaktown? Is it a little too diverse for you sf?
wish they would revive this:
http://oaklandwiki.org/Encinal_Tower
@Tyler, YES. If SF continues to pass on the daring architecture, I say Oakland should go for it.