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Emeryville’s Bay Street to open

By Daniel Freed Special to the Daily Planet
Wednesday November 13, 2002

Despite delays caused by contentious labor issues and the recent heavy rains, 20 stores are set to open next week at a new retail and residential mega-development which promises to be a cash cow for the city of Emeryville. 

“I think we’re offering people from the greater East Bay an opportunity to dine, shop, and gather. And next year a place to live,” said Eric Hohmann, vice president of Madison Marquette, the developers of the new Bay Street.  

Emeryville city officials echoed Hohmann’s enthusiasm over the opening of the $400 million, one million-square-foot development situated on 20 acres beside Interstate 80 north of Ikea. 

With 65 stores and a 16-screen movie theater opening over the next two months, 366 housing units opening a year from now, and a 230-room hotel opening in two years, the city is expecting an additional $1.3 million in property taxes and $900,000 in sales taxes to flow annually into its coffers.  

Emeryville’s Director of Economic Development Pat O’Keeffe said the sales tax revenues will stem from an estimated $90,000,000 in retail sales at the development’s shops. 

When Bay Street is fully completed, developers say it will give Emeryville, known as a home to giant retailers and manufacturers, what it has always lacked – a vibrant pedestrian-friendly downtown.  

Designed to look and feel like an authentic city center, Bay Street will hide most of its 1,900 parking spaces from pedestrian view behind new urban-looking buildings. Residential units fill the upper stories of these buildings. 

“It’s this whole urban village that will be evolving over time,” said Madison Marquette spokeswoman Didi Taft, who, like Hohmann, drew similarities between Bay Street and Berkeley’s Fourth Street shopping district. 

But not everyone in the East Bay shared the developer’s and the city’s enthusiasm for the project. 

For two days in early October, union construction workers from general contractor DPR Construction, Inc. stopped work on the development because they didn’t like the way the developers were doing business. The picketers opposed the use of traveling non-union construction crews used by some chain retailers to create the uniform interiors seen in their stores nationwide. 

There are also financial concerns. With Berkeley’s fiscal health already staggering from the recent economic downturn, Deputy City Manager Phil Kamlarz said he thinks sales at Bay Street will come as a detriment to some Berkeley retailers. 

But Denny Abrams, lead developer of Berkeley’s Fourth Street shopping area remained obstinate that Bay Street would not compete with Berkeley retailers and that the Emeryville development would bear little resemblance to its pedestrian-friendly neighbor in Berkeley. 

“It’s a mall. They don’t have the independent retailers that we do. They have the usual suspects. We’re totally a completely different experience,” said Abrams. 

The Emeryville development, which will host stores such as Barnes & Noble, the Gap, and Talbots, was built on formerly contaminated land that Emeryville bought and then restored for $12 million. 

The city paid for the restoration project using revenue from profitable chain stores that had come to the city over the last decade. Emeryville officials recouped funds used for the cleanup by suing the site’s polluters, Sherwin Williams Paint Company and the pigment company Elementis. 

An opening celebration to benefit the Alameda County Community Food Bank will be held at Bay Street on Wednesday, Nov. 13, starting at 5:30 p.m.