Oakland Focus News | Oakland News Online Blog

I found this video serendipitously and had to post it. It's totally funny. It reads that it's from the Oakland Chamber of Commerce, but I can't see Joe Haraburda, the Chamber's executive director, approving anything that has the comment "Well, that's cause you're a dumb-ass." Check it out:

This was posted at the Adams Point message board Dearest neighbors of the Cleveland Cascade, Our design team has been working hard and they're now ready to unveil the proposed Master Plan for the Cleveland Cascade for your input and comments! Please join us -- and the Oakland Public Works Agency -- for a Public Meeting on Monday, August 28th, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Lakeview Branch Library 550 El Embarcadero The landscape architects will present the proposed Master Plan that would guide the first phase of construction and site rehabilitation, funded by the $300,000 of Measure DD money allocated by the city council. This meeting is as much our opportunity to learn from you as vice versa. Please come, share you reactions, praises, criticisms, and hard questions. Your input will make this project stronger and better. It's your money and your Cascade. We'll be taking careful notes. And please stop by our updated web site at http://clevelandcascade.org

Click on the title of this post to read the blog post over at SBS NFL Business Blog.

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 ...

According to the Adams Point message board, someone's stealing the trash cans you and other lay out every morning to be collected by garbage workers. Reportedly 60 of these cans have been stolen to date and with no end in sight. Oakland police ask us to watch out for people that are impersonating public works workers, but how the heck is anyone supposed to know who they are? I mean what "marks" do we look for? A bent shovel? I don't know.

Google's started this with their free network in New York. Now they want to wire San Francisco, and I'll bet we're in the loop too. But this story will not reveal that. Municipal wireless networks latest rage By Barbara Grady, Business Writer - Oakland Tribune OAKLAND officials are thinking of joining the WiFi age and deploying a municipal wireless network to give their citizens and workers free Internet access. WiFi networks allow people to access the Internet from various "hot spots" around a city from laptops or handheld wireless devices without plugging into a jack or needing a specific Internet service account. Commercial WiFi hot spots exist in hotels and coffee shops in most cities, including Oakland. But free municipal WiFi networks, which are under planning in major cities from San Francisco to Philadelphia, are designed to give broad Internet access coverage from outdoor and indoor locations across a city. Only a handful of smaller cities have WiFi net...

Studio One needs to raise money, which you will discover as you read this Oakland Tribune article. Studio One arts facility has rich history FRIENDS of Studio One are eagerly awaiting completion of renovations to the city-owned arts facility — located in a 100-year-old former orphanage on 45th Street — so classes can resume there once again. Some $10 million in funds from Measure DD, approved by voters in 2002, were allocated to retrofit and reconfigure the structure and make it handicap accessible as well. During construction, Studio One classes temporarily are being held in downtown Oakland at the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts on Alice Street, also a historic landmark building (once the home of the Oakland Women's Club). Summer classes are under way. Funds will still be needed for art-related furnishings once the North Oakland facility reopens, so the Friends are hosting a Sept. 27 "Splash for Cash" fundraiser from 3:30 to 6 p.m. at the Temescal Pool, 371 45t...

For several years, Harold P. Jones has served as Deputy Executive Director for External Affairs. I've known Harold and had a great deal of respect and admiration for the job he's done over that time. But this month he steps down and gives way to a person who's been a friend of mine since -- I guess -- 1991: Libby Schaaf. Most recently Libby was an aide to Oakland Council President Ignacio De La Fuente and for a time to Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown. Harold personallly sought Libby for the job, and he could not have made a better choice. Congratuations Libby!

Broadway Grand is a development under construction at the corner of Broadway and Grand Avenue on the northside of downtown Oakland. As the video will show, it's a large mixed-use retail and apartment development which because of its size and placement will alter that part of downtown Oakland forever. Broadway Grand sits in what was considered -- and by some still is thought to be -- a sketchy area with drug dealers, robbers, and the homeless. But what's being constructed in these areas -- housing -- has served to bring the "hounds to the hunters" and contributed to an increasing crime rate. I'm pro-development, but I think with the number of apartments and condos going up around downtown Oakland, it's time we asked the question -- yet again -- of what kind of Oakland we want to have. In 1991, we had an Oakland community participation forum called Oakland Sharing The Vision. "OSV" as it was called drew 500 Oakl...