Development
By 7 p.m. on Monday night, the encampment at Lakeview Elementary School that drew over 200 people from the community had quieted. Parents, teachers, and activists who had taken over the school in protest of the district’s plans to close it and four other elementary school campuses were preparing for the night’s rest and having two roundtable meetings outside of the school.
Protesters at an encampment that has been growing for the last four days at Lakeview Elementary School, just off Grande Avenue, have been served with notices from the Oakland Unified School District to leave the school immediately and not return for 30 days.
School is out and parents who disagree with the Oakland Unified School District board’s decision to close five elementary schools—Lakeview, Lazear, Marshall, Maxwell and Sante Fe—at the end of this school year are protesting by building an encampment on the Lakeview campus, just off Grand Avenue.
Jorge Salinas woke up shortly after 2 am Thursday to what sounded like something exploding. He then looked outside and down Mandela Parkway from his house on 3rd Street, toward the West Oakland BART station where he saw a huge fire which he estimated to be at least four stories tall.
Residents, city employees and anyone interested in the future of the Broadway-Valdez district, which is located just north of downtown, gathered to ask questions of a panel of local experts at Temple Sinai on Monday night for an event called “Catalyzing Change: Revitalizing the Broadway-Valdez District in a Post-Redevelopment Era.”
Software developers and web designers from allover the country met in Oakland Friday through Sunday for 48 hours of non-stop competitive design and programming to develop applications that could solve some of the most crucial challenges in the adoption and utilization of solar energy.
A parklet is slated to be built in front of Subrosa Coffee and Manifesto Bicycles, and will continue a trend of new business and innovation that 40th Street has enjoyed over the last few years. There’s a record store, a restaurant, and even a new fresh produce market where there used to be only office spaces and an excess of abandoned buildings.
One of America’s largest power utilities, San Francisco based Pacific Gas and Electric, which serves half of California’s public schools, announced Tuesday that it will oppose Assemblymember Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley)’s AB 1186, or the “Saving Schools Saving Energy” bill.
With two councilmembers absent, Tuesday night’s Oakland City Council meeting was brief, and much of the agenda was postponed.