Development
Think your Chardonnay has an oaky aftertaste? Try Oakland’s! Wine connoisseurs may focus on the vines of Napa County when touring California, but this weekend one group of out-of-towners found out the East Bay has a few wineries of its own.
They squawk, they eat your scraps, they lay your breakfast, they bathe themselves with dirt: what more could you ask from backyard tenants?
The 15th annual Creek to Bay cleanup day drew hundreds of Oakland volunteers Saturday to more than two dozen watery sites, where they yanked weeds, bagged up Styrofoam cups, and pulled golf balls and plastic bags from the water.
There’s nothing finer on a Saturday afternoon then a garden full of toilets.
Trees, plants, benches and grass (or something like it) popped up around Oakland on Friday on stretches of concrete usually reserved for cars.
The controversial Airport Connector, a tram that would connect BART to Oakland’s airport, could soon be under construction after a decades-long debate. “For the first time in the 25-year history of this project,” a BART spokesman says, “we may be seeing shovels hit the ground in the next month or two.”
After years of contest, Acting Governor Abel Maldonado signed an agreement Tuesday to expedite the start of construction on the Oak to 9th land development project. Beginning as soon as 2011, the waterfront property along the estuary south of Jack London Square will be rebuilt over the next two decades.
The volunteer group Habitat for Humanity, which helps low-income working families buy homes by investing their own labor in the construction, invited neighbors and first-time homeowners on Saturday to the completion of Habitat’s Edes Avenue development in East Oakland.
As Alyssia Alexandria entered the newly renovated History Gallery at the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) Friday night, a museum volunteer handed her a few scraps of drawing paper, a small yellow pencil, and a black and white pamphlet, an official invitation to play “Choose Your Own California Adventure.”