Tonight is an important meeting for the future of Oakland’s Upper Broadway area, which the city wants to turn into a mixed-use retail district to finally bring some sales tax revenue back to the city. From the project’s website:
Oakland has long been one of the nation’s largest underserved trade areas for comparison goods… Oakland currently exports 75% of its potential sales in this category or roughly $1 billion in sales every year to neighboring communities. This loss translates into $10 million in sales tax revenue and 10,400 retail jobs. While the City has many fine merchants, it lacks many larger retailers and a critical mass of retail selection. This dearth of retail options discourage residents from shopping locally. This directly diminishes Oakland’s tax base that supports road maintenance, clean parks, and functional city services.
The Upper Broadway Strategy estimates that potential development of this 50 acre section of Broadway could result in approximately 1 million square feet of retail space and 834-1761 residential units with estimated revenue generating floor area of 2.37 million square feet with the potential to create $3 million annually in sales tax revenue.
I am all for this project (Alternative 1–Urban Mixed-Use Retail is by far the best option), but if you go to the meeting tonight (I can’t), please ask this question:
How is it consistent with the city’s goals of sustainability and affordability when the plan calls for as many as 8,357 parking spaces and 2:1 residential parking ratios? Is it really feasible to expect the city to contribute $50 million in parking subsidies to cover the excessive costs of so many parking spaces? Or should the city be pursuing an alternative which cuts costs to the city, developers, commercial tenants, and residents, such as a streetcar?
($40,000 per space x 8,357 parking spaces=$334.28 million worth of parking… Cutting that figure by just 15% would generate $50 million for a streetcar–almost enough to cover the costs of an Upper Broadway-Jack London Square line)
I can’t be there either, but you should at least give them concrete evidence of the true cost of parking. Most politicians who have never thought about it think that parking doesn’t cost barely anything, because they don’t understand the opportunity costs of wasted space.
The sheer volume of parking in all three of the draft alternatives was the biggest point of controversy at a review by the project’s Community Stakeholders Group earlier this month. Nearly everyone at the table complained that they thought too much space was being devoted to parking.
The Consultant was insistent that without that level of parking, no retailers would come, and there was really nothing to be done about it. He said that maybe at some point in the future, during the second or third phase of development, it might be possible to relax the parking rations, but not until Broadway is already a successful shopping district.
Nobody seemed to like that answer very much, and the sentiment among the group seemed near unanimous that the plans should go back and look more creatively at how to accommodate parking needs without having more square feet of parking than of stores. A streetcar did come up a couple of times, but staff just kept repeating that a streetcar is outside the scope of the specific plan effort.
The group’s feedback on the draft alternatives is supposed to be incorporated into the revised alternatives being presented tonight. We’ll see, I guess.
Oh, there was one member of the group who defended the amount of parking as necessary. She’s a retail broker, and said she agreed with the consultant that no stores would come unless there was tons of parking spaces.