Comments on: The tallest building in Oakland! No, a new one.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 02:49:21 +0000

God I hope this goes through, the city council, mayor and everyone else should work their ass off to make it happen. A iconic building like that would forever change the city and has only positives, nothing negative at all! Vote for me as mayor and I’ll personally see to it these projects get approval and completed.

By: Chris Kidd

Chris Kidd — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 20:14:58 +0000

Daniel,
I’m a little confused with your reasoning. Why, in your mind, would a 5-6 story 1920′s rectangle-replica be preferable to the Encinal Tower? It surely wouldn’t have the same economic impact. I’m not even sure it would have a positive economic impact at all. The DTO is neither hurting for 5 story buildings from the 1920′s, nor in serious need of more apartments. What is needed is A-grade business space on large enough floor plates to attract the large businesses that can help revitalize our downtwon. And personally, I abhor mickey-mouse faux-historical fakes. It just serves to denigrate the historical integrity of the real buildings from that era in the surrounding neighborhood.
And putting preference and economics aside, something like the Encinal Tower is just what Oakland’s skyline needs. Residents in SF were up in arms about building the Transamerica pyramid in the 1970′s, but it has become one of SF’s most memorable, world-renowned icons. Why should we deny ourselves the opportunity to give identity and character to our otherwise non-descript downtown?

By: Daniel Levy

Daniel Levy — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 18:36:35 +0000

I don’t like the building. I think it is ugly and too large. They should build something that is more in keeping with the area like a nice 5-6 story rectangle apartment building that looks like it was built in the 20s.

By: len raphael

len raphael — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 01:37:39 +0000

Colin makes a valid point that there will be oakland subsidies that have to be transparent. I don’t know about the rest of you, but my usual belief that business’s have the strongest self motivation and ability to evaluate their own risks has been shaken of late

Why is Oakland staying in the muni parking lot biz?

-len raphael
temescal

By: Navigator

Navigator — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 01:00:49 +0000

Colin,

The unpleasant opinion of Oakland comes from slanted San Francisco centric crime reporting. As a matter of fact, downtown Oakland is much safer than downtown SF. Oakland has recorded one homicide in its downtown compared to over twenty homicides in the various neighborhoods which constitute downtown SF. Serious crimes like robberies, burglaries, and aggravated assaults are much more common in downtown SF than in downtown Oakland. The aggravated assault rate alone is 7x higher in downtown SF according to the police crime maps of both cities. Oakland needs to launch a PR campaign to educate Bay Area residents about the true crime levels in both cities’ downtowns. San Francisco has their media promoting SF while downplaying it’s crime. Unfortunately. Oakland’s crime gets played up while the positive news gets ignored. Unlike SF, Oakland needs to pay for its PR.

By: Colin

Colin — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 04:57:33 +0000

Navigator,

I don’t disagree with your boosterism of Oakland at all. This is my home, and I love it here. I have bought a house and have every intention of dieing in it because I can’t imagine living anywhere else. I don’t feel any need to apologize for my city or anything of the sort.

But I want to be realistic about it’s place in the world.

Have you ever been to Hoboken? It’s a great city and I love it. It’s very beautiful, with incredible row houses, spacious streets, cheap real estate values, and nothing but potential everywhere you look. But you don’t think about that when you think about Hoboken. No, you think of a broken, terrible place, with lots of crime and urban decay. More importantly, no matter how attractive the building you build in Hoboken, it isn’t viewed favorably as a business center, in spite of the fact that it’s easier to get to Wall Street from Hoboken than the upper east side.

It’s affordable! It’s convenient! It’s centrally located! And yet businesses aren’t flocking there. Matter of fact, they shun it – unrealistically and at their own detriment, but they do.

Hoboken is not currently considering building the 3rd largest building in their immediate vicinity.

Now, Hoboken is not as large as Oakland, and they’re not really comparable in a lot of ways as cities. That’s not my point. My point is that people have an unpleasant opinion of Hoboken based on nothing, as they do with Oakland. And it affects the viability of large projects such as this. To pretend it isn’t so doesn’t do the city any favors.

I do not share the general desire to see as many buildings built as can be built. I don’t see an advantage to that approach and I do see disadvantages – if you think 20th is sad now, imagine it with wall to wall abandoned buildings.

By: Navigator

Navigator — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 01:04:13 +0000

I don’t understand some of the anti-Oakland “Hoboken factor” comments by Collin. Oakland doesn’t need to apologize to anyone for being a city worthy of the finest architecture, or of ambitious developments which would bring the city the prestige which it rightly deserves as the absolute geographic center of the Bay Area. I’m tired of the “no we can’t ” attitude and arguments which keep this city wallowing in mediocrity. Oakland is no “Hoboken” and San Francisco is no Manhattan. Oakland has better weather than SF, historic architecture, a more central location, and an interesting downtown with walkable neighborhoods next to mass transit. Let’s look at downtown. We have various successful neighborhoods coming together. We have Old Oakland, Chinatown, Uptown, Jack London Square, City Center, and Lake Merritt. These neighborhoods need a linchpin to bring the entire downtown together. Right now, the area between 15th & Broadway and 19th & Broadway is a dead area which desperately needs to be redeveloped and re-energized. This proposed building will bring the critical mass to revitalize this part of Broadway and connect it to the Lake Merritt and Uptown areas. Also, to reiterate what a previous poster said in regards to residential construction downtown, the 665 units of “Uptown” are apartments, not condos. Also, the 22 story high-rise “100 Grand” are likewise apartment units. Again, Oakland is a great city which needs not apologize to anyone with a San Francisco centric mind-set or a New York point of view.

By: V Smoothe

V Smoothe — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 23:45:06 +0000

I agree that the triangle looked oddly empty in the renderings, but I was thinking it would would be nice with the addition of some benches – a place where people can duck away from the sidewalk throng and sit and have a conversation outdoors.

By: New Resident

New Resident — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 23:04:54 +0000

Yeah, I talked with the architect and he was very proud of his design and the weird empty triangle up against the Tapscott building. It just would not be a nice thing to walk by.
Architecture, like your home’s walls, is not sculpture. It needs to create comfortable public spaces. Like your bedroom walls make a nice “boring” private space. That means it needs to follow the “boring” rules of human geographic psychology (enclosure, visibility, porousity, etc.). What weird stuff starts happening 50-80 feet in the air… that can be sculpture. But the first 50 feet or so should be designed so people walking by aren’t repelled by weird leftover spaces. Hence why the fake arches on on the site right now.

Have the failures of modernist arch. not taught architects enough? Considering how many still admire Le Corbusier, the destroyer of cities, I guess not. Not that this building design is anywhere near as bad as those ideas, but sure seems “uncomfortable” that is was born into a time and place where Jacobs rather than Le Corbusier won the argument.

Go high but respect the “mere pedestrian” far below.

By: V Smoothe

V Smoothe — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 22:40:50 +0000

They showed renderings of the Broadway entrance at the meeting, I just didn’t take any pictures of them. I actually thought the street face of the building was really nice – lovely and inviting.