Posts from — July 2008

In the report for Oakland’s Zoning Update Committee of the Planning Commission for Wednesday’s hearing (PDF), city’s staff makes several major mistakes in Attachment H (pdf), among other places, regarding the height of existing buildings and their placement on the skyline, as discussed at A Better Oakland. From the selection below, try to spot all eight ten errors.

Lake Merritt Skyline

Recently the fine men and women of Oakland’s Public Works Department painted over a “guerilla” crosswalk installed in May by frustrated activists in the Gold Coast neighborhood. One resident is turning to public art to aid the pedestrian-unfriendly intersection: below is his proposal, Pride Mural.

The Oakland Tribune is conducting an online poll to name the monster living in Lake Merritt. Over at A Better Oakland, V Smoothe points out out that the currently leading name, Merrittzilla, is terrible. She suggests Sammie. I suggest the reader vote in this poll!

Go to InsideBayArea.com and scroll down a little bit – the poll is next to the Sports stories.

After all the excitement downtown about DeLauer’s staying open, the Chronicle and Tribune report that it has been sold. The new owners are excited to receive government assistance, but their aim does not appear to be to maintain the business as a twenty-four-hour newsstand, according to the Trib.

The new owners said they intend to convert the newsstand at 1310 Broadway into a coffee cafe. “We’ll have Internet wireless, the whole thing.” (DeLauer’s clerk and new partner Fasil) Lemma said… The biggest change will be to end DeLauer’s 24-hour operation. “I used to work graveyard and downtown Oakland is very tough after midnight,” Lemma said. “We think that closing from midnight to 5 a.m. will reduce the crime problem.”

As I explained before, downtown residents disagree with the idea that closing DeLauer’s at night will “reduce the crime problem.” To the contrary, it would make crime much worse without a late-night presence near the all-night bus and taxi stands, and a BART station that operates until after 1am. So now the question is, why should city subsidies and community groups help DeLauer’s, at 13th and Broadway, become just another coffeeshop, when Peet’s, Tully’s and the Awaken Cafe are all within a block?

There’s more than a little jubilation around downtown since century-old DeLauer’s Super Newsstand, open twenty-four hours on Broadway between 13th and 14th, will be spared the axe. This might be surprising to many who don’t see the value of a newsstand or the value of an all-night mid-downtown gathering place, which BART patrons often find sketchy. The benefit downtowners see in DeLauer’s is that precisely because it’s a well-lit gathering place, it contributes to a safe environment at night.

13th and Broadway is a major transit hub. DeLauer’s light and street presence provide a needed active space between the BART station, bus stops, and taxi stand: the “eyes on the street.” While the folks who create and inhabit this space are not exactly Jerry Brown’s dream downtowners, there are fewer medical and criminal emergencies at DeLauer’s than at Burger King across 13th, which hosts an ambulance weekly. On balance, DeLauer’s makes a tremendous contribution to downtown safety, and whatever criminal activity it may attract is generally of the victimless sort. With a dark, closed store at night (assuming DeLauer’s space isn’t abandoned, torn down, or subject to years of construction, all of which would be even worse), the center of the DTO would be much more grim.

There’s no fundamental market reason why DeLauer’s Super Newsstand couldn’t continue. Obviously there is no longer a need for many newsstands across the city, and Cody’s recently threw in the towel. But DeLauer’s has a huge potential customer base and can make a lot of revenue on the printed page, even as fewer people make trips to Berkeley to buy books. DeLauer’s has always done a good job catering to the local crowd, with the Economist usually getting prominent placement, and romantic titles like Milk in My Coffee share counter side shelf space with Iceberg Slim and mainstream mystery novels. There really should be somewhere in downtown Oakland to buy soda, sandwiches or cigarettes in the middle of the night. A rough transition from the retiring management team and a heavy debt load, not decreased demand, is the newsstand’s real problem.

I’ve also heard many downtowners express their hopes for construction of the office building at 11th and Broadway, which would fill in a very large hole, an entire block face of empty lot and abandoned building. A UC Berkeley / CalTrans project is currently studying pedestrian traffic at 12th and Broadway, and preliminary results indicate the pedestrian crossings equal car crossings (about 6.9m annual trips). Acknowledging this area’s importance, AC Transit is reportedly planning to help DeLauer’s out with rent in exchange for hosting a transit kiosk. Downtowners ♥ DeLauer’s because people who use Broadway throughout the day understand that a continuous, pedestrian-oriented retail strip improves their experience and their safety. Now if only Rockridgers would figure that out.