Oakland News: Save The Alley Bar On Grand And Coliseum City, Too

THE ALLEY IS NOT CLOSING, just needs your help!

This Oakland News consists of a plea for you to help the beloved Alley, or The Alley, or ‘Rod Dibble’s Place’, or, well, you know. It’s at 3325 Grand Avenue and next to Penrose Oakland and across from Walden Pond Book Store. Here’s the problem: The Alley’s revenue has been cut in half because an overzealous Alameda County health inspector came in and said they could not use their stove because the air unit above it needed to be replaced.

That means no food at The Alley – no Alley Steaks.  No 20-ouncers I order.  Not even the great Alley fries.

But there are great sandwiches for you to order! I had one the other night.

In addition, the overzealous Alameda County health inspector also said the entire bar needed to be ‘moved out’ or ‘forward’ by about a foot or so – and in total asked for a number of changes that cost money, and a lot of it, to do. The kitchen can’t be used and The Alley needs $75,000 to deal with that, alone.

Save Coliseum City Oakland For Raiders And Oakland A’s

As I’ve reported before, and so I’ll use the text I typed for the first video above, just because I’m a bit taxed today, on Tuesday of this week, and at the NFL Spring League Meeting in San Francisco, and just an hour after Oakland Raiders Owner Mark Davis gave an impromptu press conference…

This one…

Mr Davis, my long-time friend Mike Silver of NFL Network, and I were having a conversation in the lobby of the San Francisco Ritz Carlton near the elevators, and I said to Mr. Davis that he should start a task force of his own to build a stadium in Oakland.

That started a new exchange that ended with Mr. Davis saying “you submit a proposal”. So, and with Mr. Silver standing as witness (and Mike helped me with my Oakland 2005 Super Bowl Bid in 1999 as a member of my Oakland Super Bowl XXXIX Bidding Committee and Oakland Alameda County Sports Commission), I asked Mark to repeat that, and he did, a total of three times.

After that talk, I made several calls and texts, and then informed NFL Senior Vice President Eric Grubman (the league’s point person on stadium projects) and then NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, just moments after his press conference.

The one where he blasted Oakland…

Not a discouraging word came from either person.

So, for me, that set in motion a round of private talks and meetings with a number of people who I can’t name, but are in a good position to really get this going. For me, the motivation is simple: for the Raiders and Athletics to be able to stay in Oakland, and for Oakland to finally regain its once great will and initiative to complete big projects.

My proposal, which some of you have seen the first two versions of, is now in its fifth version, and is being reviewed as I reform it more. But it calls for the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Joint Powers Authority to serve as master developer; it then will bring in developer partner / consultants. But if you think about it, the thorny problem of land development entitlements is simplified because the JPA already owns the land, and in my concept, we’re not using land beyond its boundaries.

All I am trying to do is set right something that went off the track years ago. Coliseum City was created as an idea but with redevelopment tax increment revenue in mind as a use = that’s gone. But even with that, no effort was made to redesign the project.

The 800-acre version of Coliseum City was the child of another Oakland Administration, and if you think about it, the Oakland city administrators who managed the project are gone, and Gregory Hunter, who should have been the next head of economic development for Oakland, took off for the private sector.

Now, we have a totally new group, and with the exception of Oakland District Six Councilmember Larry Reid, who’s been around for this and got the Coliseum City idea from Frank Dobson and Bob Leste in 2009, the group of people in the City of Oakland at the highest levels in pretty much all new and with no institutional memory. A good task force of Oaklanders who have had experience with this matter would, and can, change that.

But for now, I’m disclosing my intentions. I’m a news media publisher, but my background is in urban planning and economics. My first job out of UC Berkeley’s City Planning Grad School was as intern for the Oakland Redevelopment Agency. You can thank my 1987 analysis for creating the argument for the construction of the retail area between Oakland and Emeryville that houses the Home Depot and Best Buy, today.

And I gave a presentation to Forest City Development Company at the International Council of Shopping Centers Spring Meeting in Las Vegas, and while I worked as economic advisor to Elihu Harris, that led to Forest City coming to Oakland and to build a retail center in The Uptown District. Then, I watched with displeasure as Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown hijacked Forest City, and Elihu’s plan, to establish the “10K Housing” concept, that added 10,000 units of housing to Downtown Oakland. (Well, I wound up helping Jerry on that one, too when I produced and held a developer symposium in 1999).

Anyway, this is not going to be just me and I want the JPA to be master developer in a plan that will not call for a city or county subsidy, and has many times more revenue sources than the original Raiders deal. I’m very excited and it’s because Oakland’s in trouble.

Oakland is certainly growing but it’s starting to feel like a bedroom community to San Francisco. Moreover, and more important to me, is we’ve lost out once great ability to do big projects. Repairing Oakland City Hall and getting the Raiders back to Oakland from LA, as well as The Oakland City Center Project and The Oakland Convention Center, were some of the examples – but we don’t have a lot of them, and we’re not creating jobs for people. Restaurant jobs should not be our base. We don’t have a new major hotel to speak of, and this as the 50th Super Bowl is coming here. We’re too happy for the little things we get, and don’t think we can do the big things. That has to change.

That’s why we must form a doable plan to keep our sports teams. I have one but I’m not going to present it here first. What I did introduce before formed the basis for it, but it’s now more detailed and the numbers better worked out than before.

I think Mark Davis will like what we introduce. But the bottom line is, we must do something.

Stay tuned.