The big box retailer’s plan has “got to play out” before anything will likely happen with the site, says the Oakland council’s Dan Kalb.
The current proposal, putting up a Home Depot and a four-story parking structure on the 4.6-acre site, has been met with predictable cries of NIMBY from local neighborhood groups who’d rather see a mix of housing and retail. Almost like the reverse of the classic Joni Mitchell song — “They paved paradise, put up a parking lot” — there’s an elaborate plan to turn the plot into just that, but it has yet to happen.
If Home Depot wants to give it a shot, it’s up to them. I think it’s unlikely there’ll ever be a Home Depot there,” said Kalb, who has noted that 99% of the emails he’s received about the project are opposed to it. Still, the big box retailer continues to pursue the plan. Reached for comment recenlty, a Home Depot representative had “nothing to share” on the proposed store. What Kalb said he would like to see at the site is something more like what was originally on the drawing board after the old Safeway was moved to its new location next door in what’s now known as the “Shops at the Ridge.”
The original mixed use idea floated for the western side of the lot has been compared to the retail development of Berkeley’s Fourth Street over the past several decades. What this comparison ignores, though, is that the Berkeley site has always been ripe for development. The old Rockridge Shopping Center, on the other hand, was a 1960s-style behemoth shopping plaza with the prerequisite acres of free parking. Before that it was a rock quarry. In other words, it was never a neighborhood.
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