Development
Even though several Port-related unions have declared that they don’t support Monday’s planned Oakland Port blockade, leaders of Occupy groups are going ahead with plans to make Oakland part of a December 12 effort to shut down ports along the length of the West Coast.
As the new year approaches, Oakland officials are preparing residents for a new ordinance that will require certain property owners to replace their leaking sewer pipes. The regional Private Sewer Lateral (PSL) program—already in effect in Emeryville, Piedmont, El Cerrito, Kensington and Richmond— will start in Oakland on January 16.
In a lengthy meeting Tuesday, the Oakland City Council approved a pilot program to give more of a preference for city contracts to local and small local businesses and another one to establish mobile food pod sites. The council also appointed Victor Uno to the Board of Port Commissioners.
A new pilot program championed by Councilmembers Rebecca Kaplan and Jane Brunner would begin to legitimize Oakland’s largely underground street food businesses. And despite of years of contention, supporters and critics of mobile food seem to agree that the proposed program could be a boon to business, bolstering the mobile food industry while minimizing competition with dine-in restaurants.
This week, OUSD officials are hosting community input meetings on boundary changes that are scheduled to go on until Wednesday. The boundary changes come after the OUSD school board voted in October to close five schools — Marshall, Lakeview, Lazear, Maxwell Park, and Santa Fe. OUSD officials now have to restructure attendance boundary areas for families who live near the schools slated for closure.
One year after construction began, has the controversial, $484 million Oakland Airport Connector project created the jobs it promised? “It requires a lot of physical strength and it wears on the body,” said Tiffany West, 31, of her work as a carpenter’s apprentice. Every Monday through Friday, from 7 am to 3:30 pm, West is somewhere along Hegenberger Road between the Oakland Coliseum and the airport shoveling debris, fine-grading sites for paving or building the footings for the connector’s elevated guideway.
On Tuesday at the Community and Economic Development Committee meeting, Oakland City Council members and speakers from the audience criticized the city administrator’s office for not moving fast enough to fix systematic problems with the city’s much-criticized building services division.
Megan Reed and Christine Landry are in the market for two Christmas trees, as they push a stroller with their infant son through aisles of options at the Simonis Christmas Tree Lot on Telegraph Avenue and 51st Street on a quiet Monday morning. Reed and Landry usually buy one Christmas tree for their home, but they’re going for two this year because grandma is visiting and needs one for her place. “We got kind of the ‘junior Charlie Brown’ for…
What do the Chabot Space and Science Center, PGAdesign, Red Oak Realty, The Tip Top Bike Shop, Mr. Sparkle Window Washers, and Baja Taqueria have in common? They are all “green” businesses in Oakland.