Comments on: Reinventing the wheel. Slowly.

By: avis

avis — Fri, 09 May 2008 17:32:51 +0000

V Smoothe is right, having owned a business in SF for many years I must say this does seem to be a huge waste of time and money, but then Oakland seems to be very good at wasting money and resources. Over the years I have rented several commercial office spaces through my broker and never once considered Oakland for the obvious reasons. If Oakland is serious about getting more business to locate here they need to address the crime and grime issues that plague us first.

Is this program one of the “make work for paroled felons” that Dellums is pushing for?

By: V Smoothe

V Smoothe — Fri, 09 May 2008 05:27:17 +0000

friendly bureaucrat –

As a former market researcher, I can tell you that you’re not going to find any properties like that – not ones that are actually viable for use or development right now, that is. Property owners don’t sit on space for the fun of it, and brokerages pay multiple people to work full-time maintaining these up to date inventories. I just don’t see the point in paying city staff to assemble information that is already available at a very low cost.

By: friendly bureaucrat

friendly bureaucrat — Fri, 09 May 2008 03:31:35 +0000

I work at CEDA and the thinking on producing and maintaining the opportunity sites database is to list sites that aren’t (yet) on brokers’/CoStar’s/Loopnet’s radar screen…in other words the sites are potentially undervalued or underutilized–perhaps they have a property owner not inclined to market it.

By: Deckin

Deckin — Thu, 08 May 2008 23:44:41 +0000

You’re right that this is seriously a waste of time and money. The ridiculous thing is that no business owner (count me) is sitting around thinking, ‘gee, I really want to move into Oakland, but I just can’t figure out where to find leasable space.’ No. Here’s the thought: ‘If I take a massive risk and possibly lose everything I’ve worked for, what chances are that I can move into Oakland, make some money, and be assured that the city itself will not be an impediment to my efforts?’ Of course, answering that question doesn’t appear to be high on the Dellums team’s priority list. Maybe if someone high up in the administration had ever actually run a business (being hired as a consultant doesn’t count) from start to finish–had ever put their own life savings on the line, maybe we’d get better results. Maybe once Nadel opens her chocolate factory she’ll change her perspective. I can tell you that my family has decided against opening anything in Oakland because we just can’t bear the uncertainty and risk–crime, excessive bureacracy, you name it.

By: V Smoothe

V Smoothe — Thu, 08 May 2008 21:43:05 +0000

A couple of quick searches on SF’s tool, CoStar, and LoopNet indicate that theirs is almost as hopelessly out of date and inaccurate as Oakland’s. I just don’t see the point in paying people to compile and maintain this information when we can get it cheaply elsewhere. And isn’t it better to not provide a real estate search site at all than provide one that doesn’t have accurate information? I just don’t get it.

By: Eric Fischer

Eric Fischer — Thu, 08 May 2008 21:33:47 +0000

The really weird part is that this database is apparently already online at http://www.oaklandexplorer.com. Terrible user interface and outdated data, but it is there.

In Oakland’s defense, San Francisco also has a real estate search site like this, at http://gispub02.sfgov.org/website/sfprospector/ed.asp, so they are not the only city who thinks it’s useful to have one.