Development
This December, a “pop-up” neighborhood is coming to Old Oakland: three downtown blocks of hip—albeit temporary—retail shops that showcase local designers, artists and goods…just in time for holiday shopping.
Part pop-up restaurant, part real-life episode of Top Chef, College Avenue’s newest addition, Guest Chef, introduces an innovative business model that is new to the foodie scene: a new chef, cuisine, and menu every two weeks. And the clincher: anyone can apply to be a chef. Yes, even you.
Once a hub of automobile commerce, Broadway Auto Row is fast becoming a cultural enclave, thanks to the gentle prodding and financial investment of an eclectic group of gallerists, restaurateurs and niche shop owners who are mixing the old (and big) with the new (and small) to create a hybrid commercial corridor that keeps money flowing through the street from day to night and back again.
A new suite of rooms at Oakland Children’s Hospital is furnished with bright bedspreads, comfortable couches and chairs, kid-sized furniture, and a refrigerator stocked with snacks–all intended to give the families of profoundly ill or dying children an intimate and homelike surroundings within the hospital.
Despite the rain and cold, scores of Occupy Oakland protesters gathered Sunday morning around what remained of the group’s latest makeshift campsite, a vacant lot at 19th Street and Telegraph Avenue. Once again, earlier in the morning, police had cleared away tents and told Occupy protesters they could not camp in the city overnight.
Despite warnings from police and Mayor Jean Quan against setting up any more campsites in Oakland, Occupy Oakland protesters staged a peaceful march Saturday and then broke into a fenced downtown lot to begin staking more tents. Some neighbors pleaded with them, in vain, not to camp there.
The old Oakland Army Base, a 330-acre parcel that stretches from the city’s waterfront to the base of the Bay Bridge and into West Oakland, has lain fallow for more than a decade, as officials from the city and the Port of Oakland have mulled over how best to use the space. Over the past twelve years, plans for redeveloping the army base, which is owned in equal parts by the port and the city, have ranged from the spectacular…
Kaiser Permanente’s new Breast Care Center, which opened on October 28, serves as a stand-alone “one stop shop” for breast exams, imaging, biopsies and more.
A month after the Oakland Unified School District board voted to close five elementary schools, members voted Wednesday night to allow Life Academy, a small health and sciences high school in East Oakland, to expand to offer middle school classes as well. At a packed meeting that mostly focused on the district’s financial issues, board members also discussed the most recent state audit as well as a report on teacher and staff retention.