Oakland City Center

Coordinates: 37°48′15″N 122°16′21″W / 37.8041°N 122.2726°W / 37.8041; -122.2726
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Oakland City Center is an office, shopping and hotel complex in Downtown Oakland, Oakland, California. The complex is the product of a redevelopment project begun in the late 1950s. It covers twelve city blocks between Broadway on the east, Martin Luther King Jr. Way on the west, Frank H. Ogawa Plaza on 14th Street on the north side of the complex and the Oakland Convention Center and Marriott Hotel extend south to 10th Street. An hourly parking garage is located beneath the complex's shopping mall. The mall features an upscale fitness and racquet club, in addition to numerous take-out restaurants and other stores. The complex is served by the 12th Street/Oakland City Center BART station.

History

Though not actually one of Oakland's neighborhoods, and with only newly established condominium residences, City Center in Oakland has a privately owned outdoor shopping mall at its core. The mall is a textbook example of

residential hotels for purported code enforcement reasons under an aggressive plan called "Operation Padlock." Several pawnshops and Oakland's Moulin Rouge Theatre were leveled. According to Dr. Richard A. Walker, professor of geography at the University of California, Berkeley, the much-beloved delicatessen, Ratto's, which had been in business since around the turn of the century, was threatened by demolition before citizen protest saved it.[2]

The Clorox Building, viewed from 12th Street

The first office building, at 14th and Broadway, opened on December 18, 1973. The first skyscraper, the Clorox Building, opened next door in 1976. However, construction stalled, and by the 1980s the mall still hadn't been built and most of the site was still vacant. The project was redesigned, with a smaller outdoor retail complex and new federal office building replacing the mall, and a partial restoration of the original street grid. Several new buildings were completed in 1990, including the retail complex, named City Square, and 1111 Broadway, the new headquarters of the global shipping company American President Lines (APL). Economic recovery of downtown Oakland was stalled by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and a recession in the early 1990s, and private development at City Center stopped for the next few years. Government payrolls were not affected; the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building complex was completed in 1994, bringing more pedestrian traffic to the struggling mall.

555 City Center.

In December 1996, Oakland City Center, including the development rights to the remaining undeveloped parcels, was sold to

condominiums. Shorenstein Properties is now planning to build market-rate condominiums on one of the two remaining vacant parcels, and an office tower on the other. The latter was approved for construction in late 2007; on October 1, 2008, a groundbreaking gathering occurred for the tower.[3]

In June 2010 the majority of the City Center was sold to

See also

References

  1. ^ "The Fourteenth Annual P/A Design Awards Program" Pacific Coast Architectural Database
  2. ^ Oakland:Dark Star in an Expanding Universe Archived April 22, 2006, at the Wayback Machine, Richard A. Walker, Department of Geography, University of California, Draft of Nov. 21, 1997
  3. ^ Expectations still high for Oakland office tower – Inside Bay Area Archived October 5, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  4. ^ Avalos, George. "Oakland City Center is bought for $360 million". The Mercury News.
Notes
  1. Dr. Richard A. Walker, U.C. Berkeley Department of Geography, "Oakland: Dark Star in an Expanding Universe"
  2. Attoe, Wayne; Donn Logan (1994). "Catalysts in Action". American Urban Architecture:Catalysts in the Design of Cities. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 102–105. Retrieved February 19, 2006.
  3. Levine, Daniel (December 20, 1996). "Shorenstein expands real estate empire". San Francisco Business Times. Retrieved February 19, 2006.
  4. Laura Impellizzeri and Douglas Robson (August 27, 1999). "Building Oakland: Shorenstein Co. making moves to reshape skyline with four new downtown highrises". San Francisco Business Times. Retrieved February 19, 2006.
  5. Burt, Cecily (July 4, 2005). "Condo complex slated for City Center". Oakland Tribune. Retrieved February 19, 2006.[permanent dead link]

External links

37°48′15″N 122°16′21″W / 37.8041°N 122.2726°W / 37.8041; -122.2726