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Last Saturday as I was walking down Lakeshore, someone asked if I would sign a petition to force the Oakland City Council to adopt a new plan for the development generally called "Oak To 9th." According to the group sponsoring the petition drive, the Oakland City Coucil didn't keep a promise to preserve the gigantic 9th Avenue Terminal on the site. I signed the petition, but remarked that with just one week ago, I didn't see how they were going to get the 10,000 additional signatures they needed. But they got them. Here's the total story: Oak to 9th critics say referendum drive successful Group collects enough signatures to force council to reconsider approval of development proposal By Quynh Tran STAFF WRITER - MONTCLARION With 30,000 signatures in hand, critics of Oak to 9th development hope to force a new plan along the 64-acre swath along the Oakland Estuary. The signatures were submitted to the city clerk's office on Thursday. "We're extremely...

And on top of all this, we've got more great farmers markets than ever before. Oakland attempts to woo gourmet food industry By Marton Dunai STAFF WRITER - MONTCLARION Karen Robert Jackson always wanted to get into the food business. A successful filmmaker at Pixar with such hits as "Toy Story 2" under her belt, Jackson decided to realize her dream two years ago and teamed up with her husband to buy Crunchy Foods, the San Francisco-based makers of Suzy's Biscotti and other fine bakery products. "We were looking for the next thing, a company that wasn't necessarily high-tech, but we could do some process improvements through better planning, tracking, forecasting," she said. To make these changes would require moving to a place double the size of the San Francisco location, she said. The problem: There was no suitable and affordable place in San Francisco. So Crunchy Foods relocated to Oakland last year, joining a recent throng of small- to medium-sized...

John Flores deserves a city-wide party for how he's steered Emeryville, over the years. I first met John when I got out of Berkeley's City Planning grad school and about one-year after I worked at the Oakland Redevelopment Agency. He hired me as a young consultant and I did an analysis for he and the Emeryville Redevelopment Agency. What I did tell John was that one of my first jobs at the Oakland Redevelopment Agency as an intern was to develop an economic argument for the placement of a shopping mall, rather than an EBMUD wet-weather storage facility, at what is now the East Bay Bridge Shopping Complex in Emeryville, but in Oakland's redevelopment area for West Oakland. My next times with him were in a different role: as columnist for The Montclarion, and fighting Kaiser's proposed move to Emeryville in 1994. I wish John all the best. When John started, Emeryville barely had a population -- it was just over 4,000 people and many of them were more in Oakland than...

A sad story. This is where my stepfather's funeral was held. (Click on the title to learn more.)

The trend predicted 15 years ago is becoming reality. To me, it spells interesting marketing and retail -- for example a store that caters to young Filipino's called "Beach" in Daly City. Fascinating. Census: Minorities overtop whites Caucasians now make up less than 50 percent of Bay Area population but trend unlikely to continue, experts say By Michele R. Marcucci, STAFF WRITER - Oakland Tribune Non-Hispanic whites now make up less than half of the Bay Area's population, while the numbers of Hispanics and Asians continue to grow, census data released today show. But demographic experts believe the trends may slow in California as immigrants, looking for jobs and cheaper housing, head to other states. The Bay Area's foreign-born population also is on the rise, and more of its residents spoke foreign languages in 2005 than in 2000, the data, which mirror state and national trends, show. Non-Hispanic whites made up 46 percent of the Bay Area's total populat...

The City of Oakland is generally accused of not being politically aware, and here's more proof. When the City advanced this measure, it should have known that -- in an environmentally concious Oakland -- people would be up in arms over a plan to eliminate 224 -- 224 trees! Folks, there aren't that many trees around Lake Merritt, so the majority would have to come from the park next to Children's Fairyland. That's just not something that should happen. That area is one of the true treatures of the city and is at its best i the summer months as a place to go to get away from it all in the middle of it all. Oaklanders in battle to save 224 trees Three file suit against city's renovation plan at Lake Merritt By Heather MacDonald, STAFF WRITER OAKLAND — Three Oaklanders, upset with plans to chop down 224 trees around Lake Merritt as part of a renovation plan, filed suit against the city of Oakland Tuesday. The lawsuit claims the Oakland City Council's approval of ...