A Better Oakland

So something I’ve really wanted to write about for a while and never got around to is to actual barriers to industrial business attraction in Oakland. I hope that at some point in the future, I will get a chance to write a longer post about this, full of all sorts of links and data and such, but this will have to do for now.

So as we keep being told, the whole idea behind the industrial preservation and the new industrial zoning is to create “certainty.” I don’t have a problem with this, and, as I’ve said before, I don’t have a conceptual problem with the industrial land use policy the city recently adopted, although I think there are some specific areas where the Council made some very bad decisions. I also don’t have a general problem with the new industrial zoning code, although I again have some problems with the details.

Anyway, I want to talk about this mostly because I’m hearing Nancy Nadel say over and over again things like “We’ve just completed industrial zoning, which means we can now begin working on business attraction.”

So when I was working as a market researcher at a commercial real estate brokerage, specifically in industrial real estate, there were two very clear barriers to locating businesses in Oakland, and I can tell you for a fact that the zoning was not one of them. Certain politicians and bureaucrats have really latched onto this claim and just say it over and over and over again until my ears bleed, and nobody ever seems to question them on it. I don’t know who they’re talking to, but this was just not a concern for our clients at all.

What was worrisome to our clients? Two things. The first one is, of course, crime. Our crime problem is an issue for business attraction for two reasons - personnel and material. If people are afraid to come to work where you’re located, your business suffers from a reduced labor pool and won’t be able to attract quality staff. The much, much bigger problem though is materials. When people complain about our crime problems, they mostly talk about violent crime, which is legitimate. But we also have a serious property crime problem, and when being in Oakland means that you’re significantly more likely to get your business broken into and your materials stolen, that’s a really good reason to locate in Emeryville instead. And this is why I want to laugh when I keep hearing about attracting green technology such as solar panel manufacturing to West Oakland. Look - businesses here can’t even keep their copper wire safe - do you honestly think anyone in their right mind is going to put a factory full of silicone in West Oakland? No way. If we’re serious about business attraction, we have to deal with the crime issue, and I think we all know that we aren’t going to accomplish that with the same Council that has been letting things deteriorate for years.

Issue #2? Infrastructure. So despite what Nancy Nadel seems to think, Oakland has some of the lowest average asking rates for industrial space in the entire Bay Area. Mostly, that’s because our property is so undesirable. The crumbling warehouses that exist in much of Oakland’s industrial areas aren’t suitable for most of the type of businesses we want to attract. Nancy Nadel keeps talking about bringing biotech - biotech companies want to locate in fancy new light industrial business parks that have all the nice modern amenities. There are, of course, other kinds of businesses that have fewer needs and could use some of our old warehouses just fine, if only they weren’t falling apart. It is not unusual that the cost of bringing the ancient industrial space in West Oakland into conformity with modern safety codes is greater than building an entirely new building. So the issue isn’t that the rent is too expensive (because the property owner wants to leave their property vacant in homes it will be converted for housing, as some people claim), but that the necessary infrastructure improvements that will make the property usable are too expensive. Nancy Nadel choose to blame property owners for this, saying that they are not paying for the improvements themselves because they’re “greedy.” Any Councilmember who was serious about industrial business attraction would, of course, be looking for ways to work with property owners to deal with the problem instead of deciding that they’re the enemy.

Anyway, if we want industrial business in Oakland, we need to provide appropriate space for them to operate. Sean Sullivan has proposed emulating models of successful downtown redevelopment efforts to create appropriate space in West Oakland. That is, the redevelopment agency could do something like we did with Forest City, identifying a developer willing to build an R&D/light industrial business park and assisting with parcel consolidation and perhaps providing some sort of subsidy for any necessary environmental remediation. The West Oakland redevelopment fund isn’t exactly flush with excess cash, so there are some limits on how much financial assistance we could provide, but we can take advantage of bonding capacity if we have a real shot at getting someone to build actual desirable business space. My understanding is that this is something the Oakland Partnership is hoping to work on, and I do hope we can get something moving relatively soon.

Nancy Nadel’s policy aide Marisa Arrona called me this morning about Tuesday’s post about the lies in Nancy Nadel’s campaign literature to tell me that the Jefferson Park skate park project has not been dropped, and that she has been working on identifying funding sources for the project for over a year. She says that the first funding source fell through, but that they’re looking at three different funding sources and that the project will be very expensive. When asked about the funding sources they’re exploring, she said they were confidential. This, of course, doesn’t change the fact that the campaign literature claims the project has been completed even though it hasn’t, with the line “transformed Jefferson Park into a skate park,” (as illustrated in the screen grab below), which was the entire point of my original post. But Arrona requested that the post be updated to reflect that she is working on the park, so I’ve updated as she asked.

Here’s a screen grab of the page on Nadel’s website I was referring to, taken Tuesday morning:

Here’s a screen grab of the page now, taken this morning

In case not all of you read The Argus - Fremont was considering a plastic bag ban of their own, conducted a study of the impacts it would have, and decided not to ban them based on the study’s results.

Okay, that’s a lie. I hate election season. It’s exhausting trying to find time to cover all these races and forums and then just the normal stuff going on in Oakland, plus trying to squeeze in time to volunteer, and of course do my real work. I’m overwhelmed - I just realized yesterday that I haven’t read the comics in weeks - I’ve been trudging through life with no idea of what Mark Trail is up to! And we all know that’s no way to live. Anyway, I mention all this because I want to apologize if you’ve sent me an e-mail and I haven’t responded. I am not ignoring you on purpose, I’m just really behind. And I am sorry, and I will try to catch up on the backlog as soon as possible. My poor best friend is getting married in like two months and I’m supposed to be planning her bachelorette party, and even she hasn’t heard from me in two weeks, so please don’t take my failure to respond personally.

But even though election season means I’m really busy, and even though it starts to get incredibly boring after a while, hearing people say the same things over and over again, I do sort of love it a little bit because it puts politicians on their best behavior. Nancy Nadel has never been so polite and responsive to her constituents, and Jane Brunner all of a sudden wants more police! At the Downtown Lake Merritt candidate forum last night, Nadel even said that she had just that day called Safeway and Trader Joe’s about coming to West Oakland (they’re not interested). Sure, it may have taken weeks of her getting hammered on the grocery store problem at like every campaign appearance to put in that bare minimum effort, and it’s been more than a year now since Eugene Market closed, but hey, at least she finally picked up the phone! It almost makes you wish they had to run for re-election more often.

By the way, if there’s anything election related you’d like to see coverage of here, whether it’s a particular issue or a certain race (several e-mails have expressed interest in school board), please either leave a comment about it or send me an e-mail. I’m not promising I’ll get to everything, but I know there really isn’t much media coverage of these elections at all, and I do want people to be informed.

UPDATE: Now I feel bad. I wrote this really quickly as I was distracted with work and didn’t edit it before I posted, and I did want to apologize to people for not responding to e-mails, but it does seem, reading it now, really whiny. Anyway, I didn’t mean to come off that way. I love my blog, even if election season can be somewhat tiring at times.

I write today for Novometro about the Oakland Partnership.

I hope to find the time to write more about last Friday’s Economic Summit soon, although I am, as usual, behind on my blogging schedule. Anyway, I wanted to comment on something Dan Lindheim talked about in one of the panels, and was also quoted in the newspaper about:

Dan Lindheim, the director of the Community and Economic Development Agency, said finding spots for business to locate is not as easy as finding spots for housing opportunities, in part because many businesses are content to stay where they are even if they are only making a low-level profit.

He did say the city continued its work on a data base on what parcels are available for different types of commercial opportunities.

“We’ll certainly be able to (operate the data base) with staff,” he said. “What we want to ultimately be able to do is to get it so that it’s available online so people can really have individual access. We’re not quite there yet.”

I just don’t understand why Oakland’s city government feels the need to constantly reinvent the wheel. In case you don’t know much about commercial real estate, let me give you the rundown. There are these things called commercial real estate brokerages. When you see those big signs on the buildings or vacant lots saying things like “For lease. Call so and so,” that’s the number for the broker representing that property. Of course, most properties don’t get leased simply by having someone drive by and seeing a sign and thinking a building looks pretty. Most properties get leased when someone calls up a broker and says something like “Hi Jake, I want to move my business to Oakland and I need at least 10,000 square feet near a freeway with at least 2 grade level loading doors.” Then the broker sends an e-mail to one of their market researchers and says “all the spaces in Oakland, Emeryville, Alameda, and Berkeley half mile from freeway, 10k-12k sf 2 grade doors, asap.” It’s the same with office space, although needs there tends to be more generic.

Then the researcher will look that up in their database of available properties. Large brokerage houses usually maintain their own databases, based on the monthly listings released by all the other brokerages and marketing flyers sent out and a variety of other sources. Smaller companies usually can’t afford their own researcher on staff, so they just buy a subscription to two existing databases, CoStar and LoopNet. Both are up to date and comprehensive. A LoopNet searching subscription costs less than $40/month if you pay for a year upfront.

Anyway, I realize that what Lindheim is describing isn’t the exact same thing, but it’s close enough to be totally pointless and wasteful. I mean, do the taxpayers of Oakland really need to be paying someone to make and maintain a list of available properties when we could instead just be like “You want to space for your biotech company, here’s a broker’s number?” (Although in that case, the answer would be more like “We don’t have any. Go to Emeryville.”) Opportunity maps made sense for housing development, but with business attraction, especially industrial business attraction where the needs are complicated and unique to each company, there’s just no point in replicating work that other people are already doing, and are doing a better job of it that the government ever will.

Hopefully I will get a chance to post a real blog later today, but for now - if you’re a District 3 resident and missed previous debates, you have another opportunity to grill the candidates tonight at the Scottish Rite Temple (1547 Lakeside Drive) downtown from 6:30 to 8:00 PM. All three candidates have confirmed, and the forum will be moderated by Aimee Allison, Jim Ratliff, and Robert Gammon.

There’s still almost a month before the City Council elections, and I have to admit, I’m already sick of them. I’m tired of writing about them, I’m bored of watching the candidates all say the same things over and over again at forum after forum, and I’m tired of constantly having to watch Nancy Nadel tell voters things that are just not true over and over again. (Last night at the Old Oakland Neighbors forum, BTW, she once again told the audience that Mandela Foods is opening at the end of the month.)

If you look at Nancy Nadel’s campaign website, you’ll see a long list of all sorts of great things that she’s done for District 3. (Well, sort of. The list isn’t actually all that long, particularly for someone who’s been in office nearly 12 years.) Anyway, it frustrates to me to watch her take credit for this improvement or that project, when the people involved will tell you that she never provided any assistance. But being able to claim responsibility for every good thing that happens in your district appears to be just another one of the perks of being the incumbent, so I deal with it. And it’s frustrating to me to watch her make claims that aren’t true, like telling people she’s creating a new teen center in West Oakland, when the reality is that there is no teen center coming. (Nancy Nadel used $850,000 of city money (PDF!) to purchase a building last fall that she wants to turn into a teen center. But there is no actual funding available, so currently, the building is just sitting there, mothballed, and costing taxpayers something like $18,000/year for maintenance and graffiti removal).

Anyway, it’s one thing to claim that you made something happen in your district when you didn’t have anything to do with it, or to say that you’re working on something that isn’t going to happen, but it’s another thing entirely to advertise accomplishments that simply don’t exist. Look at her position paper on the environment (PDF!).

Included on her list of accomplishments is:

Established new dog parks at Mosswood and Lake Merritt.

Okay. There is no dog park at Lake Merritt. None. The Oakland Dog Owners Group has been trying to get a dog park at Lake Merritt for quite some time, but so far, their efforts have failed. Anyway, I find this amazing. Why does Nancy Nadel think it’s okay to lie like that in her campaign literature? Does she think that nobody’s going to notice? What a sad comment on Oakland’s electorate.

Also, this:

Transformed Jefferson Park into a skate park for youth.

This is just not true at all! Jefferson Park isn’t a skate park, nor is it on its way to becoming one. I went there on Saturday and took pictures for you:

Apparently, some people are tired of grocery store posts. I suggest those people scroll down and read my recaps of last week’s HarriOak All Candidates Forum and of last month’s District 5 League of Women Voters forum. I want to talk about Mandela Foods some more.

East Bay Conservative posted a photo showing the unimpressive state of the of the Mandela Foods store at the end of March. Since it’s been a while, I figured I’d stop by and check out their progress since I happened to be in the neighborhood yesterday. This is what I found:

Yes, that’s the same Mandela Foods that District 3 City Councilwomen Nancy Nadel claims on her re-election campaign website will be open in April, the same Mandela Foods that Nancy Nadel said would be open in April at the League of Women Voters Forum a month ago, and the same Mandela Foods that Nancy Nadel said at the All Candidates Forum a week ago would be opening in May. This is the same Mandela Foods that Nancy Nadel uses repeatedly in candidate forums as an example of how she has brought neighborhood serving retail to West Oakland. And they still haven’t even begun build-out. Folks, this store is not opening this month. At this point, I’m wondering if it’s going to open ever.

Remember, Nancy Nadel handed these people $100,000 of your money in October 2006, and the City Council voted to give them another $200,000 of tax money in September 2007. Meanwhile, we’ve limited the amount of produce a neighboring store is permitted to sell as a means of ensuring the success of Mandela Foods, and rejected another grocer who wanted to open up in the area next to a McDonalds and KFC because they didn’t pay enough. Our priorities are seriously out of whack.

Related posts:

• 05.01.08 Mandela Foods Cooperative: Subsidizing Failure
• 04.30.08 Fresh & Easy update in the Trib. Also, shame on you, Nancy Nadel!
• 04.28.08 Finally, a clear answer on Fresh & Easy
• 04.01.08 West Oakland is not getting a grocery store anything soon
• 02.01.08 Green jobs, Fresh & Easy
• 11.14.07 Look out Whole Foods, here comes Fresh & Easy

I’ve finally managed to upload all the video from the All Candidates Forum last week. Big thanks to Elise Ackerman for all her hard work organizing the event. District 3 candidates Nancy Nadel and Sean Sullivan were there, but the third candidate, Greg Hodge, was not. (His wife managed to make it.) Of the at-large candidates, Kerry Hammill was absent. The group questions lasted until about 8:20, and all the candidates (except Nancy Nadel) hung around for a while to talk to residents one on one. Anyway, recap, video, and response for all the group questions below. Enjoy! (more…)

I started this recap weeks ago, but then never finished it, partly because I was busy, but mostly because I found this debate incredibly boring. The people running against De La Fuente are clowns. David Wofford wasn’t even there. Also, I didn’t find the questions all that interesting. Anyway, on with it.

Ignacio De La Fuente said that District 5 has really transformed, citing the change in International Boulevard, which had a 50% vacancy rate when he entered office, and is now a thriving commercial street with less than 1% vacancy rate, and that it now provides the second highest revenues to the City. (I’m not sure if he meant District 5 provides the second highest revenues of the Council districts, or if he meant Fruitvale provides the second highest revenues of any commercial district. Both seem plausible.) He said he has a reputation as the person who gets things done, and talked about how Fruitvale had the first transit village in the country, and how he got three new schools built in the District because he cares about education.

Beverly Blythe said she’s lived in Fruitvale for 25 years, and has worked in the District “underground,” explaining that she’s chaired the City Board, the NCPC, and she’s been on a variety of boards. She said that some positive things have happened in the District, but we also have a lot of killing, and we need to pay attention to what’s happening underground. She complained about parolees and pedophiles, and said she wants to create a fast track to citizenship for the Mexican Americans in her district.

Mario Juarez said he grew up in District 5, from Hawthorne Elementary School to Fremont High. He said he’s a small business owner, and employs 6 people, plus 60 agents. He said he’s running to resolve the issue of crime, and that he has a plan to do that. His plan involves: focusing job development money into communities, add community police officers by growing our own officers in Oakland, provide additional funding for the school district, and enforce the curfew law.

V: Winner: Ignacio De La Fuente. Okay, I’m not even going to bother naming winners anymore in this one, because Ignacio De La Fuente just won every single question hands down. There was just no contest, ever. Both my viewing partners, one of whom was an Igancio supporter and the other of whom isn’t involved in City politics, strongly agreed. Anyway, what else can I say about this? The opening statements were probably the high point of both Juarez’s and Blythe’s performance. I don’t know what the City Board is, though. (more…)

Wow. This makes me want to take back every mean thing I’ve ever said about the Oakland City Council. I am so happy I don’t live in Detroit.

Thanks to Sweet Melissa for sharing this.

West Oakland houses 28,000 people and does not have even one full-service grocery store. Residents with access to a car or near the Emeryville border can shop at Pak ‘n’ Save, but most of the area’s food needs are met at one of West Oakland’s 53 liquor stores, where produce is scarce and prices for staples tend to be significantly higher than at real grocers. (A 2005 UCSF School of Medicine study found that in Hunter’s Point liquor stores, a loaf of bread averaged $1.94 versus $1.09 in grocery stores elsewhere in San Francisco.) This places a serious burden on an area where the average income is only $12,000/year. Despite wonderful efforts by local groups to make produce more readily available, the food access and food security situation in the area is dire. (more…)