Piedmont Avenue residents and merchants debate new BevMo! store

Proposed design for BevMo on Piedmont Avenue if conditional permits are approved by the city.

Ever since the Blockbuster on Oakland’s Piedmont Avenue went out of business in April, the building that housed the video rental store has remained empty. Recently, though, a prospective new tenant appeared: a sign on the door notified passersby that the liquor franchise Beverages and More (BevMo!) has applied for a permit to move into the former movie rental store.

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Wardrobe For Opportunity helps job-seekers dress for success

The Wardrobe For Opportunity office on 14th Street in downtown Oakland is on the second floor of a commercial building. A buzzer at the entrance grants access to the office, but don’t expect to see a room filled with desks and computers. Those are in a corner just far enough away so clients are not distracted from the space they just entered. The boutique is filled with racks of women’s clothing. Dresses, coats, skirts and tops and a space for shoes. The men’s section is almost as large and carries all the items needed to dress someone in business attire.

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CVS superstore to stay open a little while longer

Much to many Oakland’s residents’ chagrin, over the past few months the CVS superstore on Broadway and Pleasant Valley has been packing up its wares. This colossal neighborhood general store, which has been around since the 1960s, carries everything from motor oil to shoe racks to extensive gardening equipment. The shopping center’s master leaseholder, Safeway, notified CVS in 2009 that it would not renew its lease in order to make way for a shopping center redesign. The mega-drugstore was initially slated to close this June.

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Former Super Longs to close amidst extensive redevelopment plans

Long loved by East Bay residents, North Oakland’s mega-drugstore will close this summer due to plans to demolish and redevelop the shopping center where it is located. For decades this one-stop-shop has been a neighborhood institution, but now the store’s landlord has declined to renew its lease, slating it to close by the end of June.

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Safeway silent as some residents criticize building plan

Safeway supermarkets plans to demolish its Pleasant Valley shopping mall  — which at 185,000 square feet is about half the area of the Great Pyramid at Giza — and replace it with one almost two-thirds larger. The new mall would be 304,000 square feet with 1,066 parking spaces, or 50 percent more spaces. Neighborhood critics…

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