that longs formerly payless was at one time (80s/early 90s) oakland/berkeley/emeryville/piedmont’s only “big box” store (and its a real stretch to call a drug store big box)… back in the days before emeryville and the shopping centers along 880 between downtown and the airport. big box retailers were definitely late to arrive to the east bay.

i think safeway is one of the few supermarket companies that is willing to think outside the suburban box, though they only seem to on really urban sites. but the broadway/college safeway site was promising.

re: 59/59A bus service, not that it was even remotely a major transit destination or had the ridership but montclair bus service has been drastically scaled back. look at the bus service there 10 years ago and look at what it will be when the service cuts are enacted.

Adding open space on the eastern end makes sense, and it’s not precluded here. In fact, Safeway’s drawing also included something to that effect. I was most interested in the interior of the site, because that’s where Safeway’s proposal was really inadequate. Note that you could enlarge the pedestrian plaza I included, or potentially even close “Bilger Street” or the last chunk of “McAdam Street” off to cars altogether, as well. And the pedestrian alley storefronts could have outdoor seating, making a bit more open space.

The other thing is that the wetland/pond is a nice view from a plaza, so I would want to take advantage of that. Instead of just having the one plaza smack in the middle of cars and shoppers (which can still be an enjoyably busy place to be), I would add another, possibly somewhat narrow stretch along the east side of the property that would connect to CCA and include bike paths.

Overall it is a much more appropriate design that Safeway’s. I could see a bit more open space- as much as I dislike the creepy plastic vibe at San Jose’s Santana Row, their middle strip of pocket parks with benches and fountains is really well used.

Also, the lower end of College is already quieter than the area near the BART station. There aren’t as many popular commercial establishments packed in a row on the south stretch. It seems unlikely that the somewhat dispersed businesses on lower College would suddenly give rise to development on Broadway, when that hasn’t happened so far.

The point is: more parking doesn’t suddenly create a destination if there isn’t already one there. You need to give people a reason to visit a place.

The need for parking declines in part because we shape development that lends itself to carfree living. Change doesn’t occur in a vacuum — it occurs because we support and implement policies that effectively guide behavior in a certain direction.

I’m not sure we need to think of this as development “spreading” from Uptown or from College. What we’re doing is concentrating on important nodes along Broadway, and improving those individually. The Upper Broadway Specific Plan would address Broadway through 27th. There’s the area around Pill Hill, and MacArthur/Kaiser. There’s already a little node at 40th that could be expanded and reinvigorated. And now we’re talking about 51st. Once we’ve really done a solid job on reinvigorating those hotspots, then, it’s easier to connect the dots, so to speak — to fill in the gaps to make the entire length of Broadway the really great street that Oakland deserves and has been missing.

Lastly, I would just point out that planning itself takes a long time. It can take years to produce a finished plan (if it covers a large area), and then it takes even longer to implement, depending on economic cycles. If Broadway is really 20-30 yrs away from being developed, then serious corridor planning should begin now — not in 20 to 30 years.

Why you ask? The BART end of lower College currently has lots of parking evenings and weekends at the BART station. This currently doesn’t exist at the B’way end. More convenient parking might indeed allow better utilization of lower College. This would allow College to expand down to Broadway organically, and eventually up and down Broadway, much sooner than waiting for development to spread from Uptown to Safeway. This provides a second focus for commercial and residential development, which will always be faster than spreading from a single focus. While this doesn’t force folks onto transit immediately, it does provide a path for higher density development that will allow the natural evolution to non-auto oriented means of transit. By the time that Safeway is ready to remodel again, natural evolution of transportation will have decreased the need for parking. In the meantime, building elevated paring on the Safeway site will allow that to be repurposed gradually as parking needs decline.

In any case, it’s not so much the identity of the stores that I was after, but rather, what the built environment looks like. Adapting big box stores to an urban setting is no longer a new thing. See, for example, the Target stores in Chicago or Minneapolis. It’s possible to have both big box and a walkable environment.