"Look at West Oakland, for example. There are no grocery stores there." (San Francisco: apartment complexes, low crime)

[jade408]

Originally Posted by Bunjee

Huh. I lived in West Oakland and used to go to the Pac N Save. Sure, it could be better managed but it was a fully stocked grocery store.

Pack n Save is in Emeryville. It is well known that Oakland has a lot of retail leakage: where people shopping in neighboring cities for commodities and consumer goods. There are a few areas where this is especially true in Oakland:

Department Stores: Macy's, Nordstroms, Penny's Target are in SF, Albany, Concord, San Leandro and Walnut Creek

Mall type chain stores: SF, Walnut Creek, Emeryville

Grocery stores in the middle class + neighborhoods are easy to find, but West Oakland residents head to Eville and East Oakland residents have a few choices, but sometimes it is far. (I love Mi Pueblo though!)

In the past 4 years or so Oakland has been attracted lots of new groceries: 2 Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, the flagship Farmer Joe's and many of the Safeway's have been remodeled recently. Also with the Albertson's transition, the stores converted to Lucky.

Many Oakland neighborhoods are notoriously anti big box and chain (remember the controversy when a Starbucks and Blockbuster opened on Piedmont Ave) and there are not many areas suitable for new Big Box development. SF, Berkeley and Oakland make it very difficult for large retailers to develop new locations. (Remember all of the controversy over the new Oakland Walmart). This isn't exclusive to "low rates or economic development in Oakland." It is a complicated problem: Oakland makes it hard for developers and the neighborhoods with lots of space for big development have a host of concerns before new development can come to fruition. (Hello Oakland Naval Base)

I think Jerry Brown made a difference in making Oakland a bit more developer friendly, and over the past 10 years the climate for commercial development has improved greatly. I'm glad to see that the traditional retailers are on board. This year Target has confirmed a new Oakland location, Kroger is looking and Walmart/Target are looking for more spots.

In the past 5 years Oakland has added a new Walmart/suburban strip mall, opened a shiny new Toyota dealership, signed off on a huge new redevelopment project just below the Lake, revitalized Uptown, and is 65% done re-imagining Jack London Square. (In addition to all of those new groceries mentioned earlier) That sounds like significant commercial and economic progress to me. Combine that with the 10k downtown plan and things are looking pretty rosy on the commercial front. I can't think of any areas in the bay who have topped that lately. Most other development has slowed down or stopped as far as I can tell.

[sonarrat]

Originally Posted by jade408

In the past 5 years Oakland has added a new Walmart/suburban strip mall, opened a shiny new Toyota dealership, signed off on a huge new redevelopment project just below the Lake, revitalized Uptown, and is 65% done re-imagining Jack London Square. (In addition to all of those new groceries mentioned earlier) That sounds like significant commercial and economic progress to me. Combine that with the 10k downtown plan and things are looking pretty rosy on the commercial front. I can't think of any areas in the bay who have topped that lately. Most other development has slowed down or stopped as far as I can tell.

Yes indeed.. here in Evergreen, development is as stagnant as the mosquito-infested water in foreclosed houses' pools. The only new structure I've seen go up, in the time I've lived here, was built to replace a restaurant that burned at Capitol and Aborn. An old bank is being turned into a Taco Bell. That's about it.. there's a huge plot at Tully and White which was going to be developed, but the city rejected the plan, so there are cattle grazing on it now.

[tanglenet]

Since there is little to no shopping in West Oakland, I would not have a problem with a Walmart there. Having said that, their business practices are abysmal. I was pretty shocked to find out how many assaults, rapes and murders have occured in their huge parking lots across the country as they do not patrol them. Store security is to protect the inventory not the patrons. For an eye opening film, check out:

Walmart: The High Price of Low Cost

should be avaliable on Netflix

[Mr. Fantastic]

True. Walmart tends to attract "lower income" clientèle, and it's one of the reason why many lower crime, higher income cities don't like Walmart within their borders.

That being said, I don't think a Walmart in Oakland could possibly add anymore murder, rape, and assault then is already in the city. Oakland is already #1 in the state for all of those categories of violent crime.

[BVitamin]

Originally Posted by Mr. Fantastic

That being said, I don't think a Walmart in Oakland could possibly add anymore murder, rape, and assault then is already in the city. Oakland is already #1 in the state for all of those categories of violent crime.

What's your source?

[Mr. Fantastic]

Originally Posted by BVitamin

What's your source?

For what?

[BVitamin]

Originally Posted by Mr. Fantastic

For what?

Originally Posted by Mr. Fantastic

That being said, I don't think a Walmart in Oakland could possibly add anymore murder, rape, and assault then is already in the city. Oakland is already #1 in the state for all of those categories of violent crime.

In bold.

[Mr. Fantastic]

Washington, D.C.-based CQ Press calculated the rankings using crimes reported to the FBI in six categories — murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and motor-vehicle theft. A total of 332 metropolitan areas and 393 cities was considered in the survey, using statistics released by the Uniform Crime Reporting Program of the FBI in September.

Pleasanton Weekly : Oakland has 3rd highest crime rate in U.S. CQ Press reports

[silverkris]

Originally Posted by phorce

Neither do all parts of LA, NYC, Boston or any other major city. Grocery stores and fresh groceries in low income area's is a major problem in all cities NOT just Oakland as presented by the article if you actually read it.

Correct - and the lack of grocery stores and fresh groceries in low income areas is often a contributing factor to higher rates of obesity and other health problems in these areas.

However, if retailers are astute enough and can work with these communities they will find that there are opportunities for groceries and supermarkets in low income areas simply because they are underserved. PathMart opened up a store in Harlem, NYC years ago and they do roaring business ever since.

[Mr. Fantastic]

Originally Posted by silverkris

PathMart opened up a store in Harlem, NYC years ago and they do roaring business ever since.

That's a false correlation. Harlem has experienced massive gentrification in the past 2 decades. That's more of a contributing factor than any imagined connection between low income people starving for a "Pathmart".