For example, the proposed off ramp for 29th Ave would north bound traffic to take a left turn to access the Park Street bridge. The off ramp would elevate to meet the new overpass. Members of the TC expressed concern about the additional load on the Park Street bridge.

We use to live by a creek, build tree houses, ice skate on the creek, go hiking or to the lake, ride bikes and not see a car for hours, no TV until after 8pm, my mom would call us in for dinner ever night at 5:30 with a meal consisting of all food groups (if we wanted a snack it was a peanut butter sandwich), we would take a bath and go to bed by 9pm…Although I have fond memories of my past, I don’t live in the past or expect others to also.

My boss who grew up in a similar situation as I chose to raise his children in SF. They have been exposed to feeding the homeless, exposed to diversity, private and public schools, shopping malls, Art, public transportation, drugs (exposed not using), sex, Music, and an array of other things I had no idea existed until I went to college. His children are some of the most well adjusted kids I have met. They way they grew up it is just different.

I chose the Bay Area not expecting it to stay the same as when I moved here, and I am glad it doesn’t. I like it here better now than I did 15 years ago. I go back to this town of 200 people, some things have changed but it is much the same…I could never go back to live there or the town of 10,000 we live afterwards.

If I did have children, I believe I would have raised them more like my boss rather than in a small excluded community, where you knew everyone by name and everyone was your friend but when you left you knew nothing of the real world.

In my opinion, family and memories are important, but more important is the world you leave behind. If we keep building out using up the farm lands we leave a lot less than what we came with. I am for more density in the cities. More Jobs in the Suburbs, more public transit, more education on diversity, more help for single parents, less commute time and more quality family time for families. More green technology, more research and development for medical, more access to health care, more drug and treatment and mental programs, more spiritual programs, more education about crime. Less taxes (which is an oxymoron)…with all my more’s. I was a Republican for half of my life, it is amazing how you can change.

One of my best friend who works for a women which several years ago chose to move her family from San Mateo to Modesto so they could be around where she grew up and her family was, more affordable, and in a smaller community. Well guess what, Modesto isn’t the same and she commutes 4-5 hours a day and is missing out on her children’s life.
They can’t afford to move back to the bay area now and she doesn’t want to give up her job…and her husband a stay at home dad doesn’t want to go back to work.

So after all that, my views are based on my experiences, the environment, quality life, and although I have fond memories of the past, I like the present and opportunities of the future as well. I don’t expect Alameda to stay the same or any of the surrounding communities. Hopefully Alameda will grow job opportunities. Hopefully Oakland will have more high rises around job and transit centers. I turned don’t a great job because my commute time would be to long. (The ferry ride is 20 minutes).

Do you really think the widening of the freeway is for Oak to 9th or maybe for the increase business at the Port of Oakland and the ton of jobs it creates. Every time I get on there there are a ton of big rigs and it seems to get worse every year.

I lived at 5th Ave from ‘79 to ‘88 and there are even more working artists now than when I left.

We suspected in 1979 that eventually the Port would come and probably declare eminent domain. Before the current 9th Ave project was proposed, the writing was on the wall and many folks in that neighborhood became very active and involved in Oakland waterfront politics when Jerry Brown became mayor and came up with his theory of 10,000 new bodies equals critical mass for downtown Oakland revitalization.

I partially subscribe to Jerry’s theory but worry about how it’s being executed. Saying so made me a public enemy among some of the more strident denizens of 5th Avenue activism. In the last five years Oakland drew up a redevelopment district adjacent to that neighborhood which captures a lot of inner East 12th and 14th, but they gerrymandered it to include the area of 5th to Ninth.

Initially Roma Design group, who I believe has consulted on our FISC (Alameda Landing), surveyed the entire stretch. Believe it or not, they were perhaps more inclined to recognize that enclave as having a cultural value than the Port may have liked. The Port appears to have decided that they would leave 5th Avenue alone rather than stir up a controversy in the short term. It seems fairly clear that their strategy is to develop all around that area and make it so much of a drag that people will leave and owners will finally sell. The lease for the concrete plant is one other issue for the Port to resolve before they can completely take over Clinton Basin area. (I have historic maps of the entire area from early 1800’s onward.)

DK- I have no idea of the specifics of the widening, whether it is to improve the existing lanes and shoulder or to actually add lanes, which would in fact seem impossible along the elevated section before 16th Avenue. That stretch is one of the rottenest road surfaces along all 880. The newly reinforced support columns for the 16th Ave over pass are probably set wide enough for widening, but I think the section immediately south, including the Alameda exits at 23rd, Fruitvale and High street would present a challenge for an entire added lane.

So much for reducing my posts, but I squandered much of my youth right there at 5th Avenue and it’s dear to my heart. A new moratorium starts 1, 2, 3, now!

Honestly I have missed the actual details, but my from my view there is no way they will increase the capacity for that section of 880. The widening may lengthen on & off ramps but do the plans really create a single additional lane for that stretch of 880? I don’t think so. - Will CALTRANS move the support columns for the overpasses and add elevated lanes? – I bet not.

Obviously the “widening” is a hoax – it is merely to support ramp traffic for the yet-to-be approved OAK to 9th traffic. BTW -How much did Californians pay for the “Ron Cowan’ expressway to Bay Farm?

Joel, #12 what do you really really know of Oak to Ninth or how it will physically impact the adjacent environs for you to say you “like” it?

I’ve seen some sketchy newspaper descriptions with equally sketchy drawings. While I am loath to be jumping on the band wagon of Manhattanization rhetoric, these towers scare me.

In 1979 I moved into an industrial building on the waterfront block where nearby Fifth Avenue terminates at the estuary. It was a true backwater like Gate 5 Sausalito and a true bygone era I will always cherish. Things were so sleepy back then that aside from a couple restaurants, Jack London Square consisted of a flag pole at the foot of Broadway with a couple boat slips and Heinhold’s First and Last Chance bar (Jack London drank here). You had to drive to Cafe Med on Telegraph in Berkeley to get a latte. On MLK Way no less, because the 980 interchange was still under construction.

Two major dry docks and ship repair facilities have gone and been replaced with stuff like Executive Inn. I’m nostalgic for the past, but can adjust to all this change. The private gated condo at Oak near KTVU with it’s ground level parking cage sucks compared to a more imaginative mixed use enclave which could have been built in it’s stead, but it is benign compared to what the Ninth Avenue project purports to be.

The widening of 880 and the domino effect created by that operation, which includes the revived train spur across our bridge entrance, may be a long over due and needed improvement. But it seems obvious to me that the reason it is happening NOW is to literally pave the way for Oak to Ninth. Get ready for capital “C” ca-ching change! Plenty payback for the impact of the Point on Chinatown, not just on Alamedans but Oakland’s own.

The back up on Embarcadero from JLS to 16th Ave and Govt Island bridge when South 880 gets clogged is nothing new at all. It’s been that way for years. But if Oak to Ninth is built as proposed you will be better off staying on the freeway in bumper to bumper than to try that option.

Has anybody seen a drawing for the 16th Ave on and off ramp “improvements” to be shoe-horned in? I missed a critical TC meeting where some of this was discussed; the visuals on the web video are useless.

If the Oak street parking garage seems grossly out of proportion, just wait for the towers at Oak to Ninth.

Aside from infrastructure and environmental impacts, the isolation of that location makes it really poor for kids or anybody on foot, so the demographic of the instant “neighborhood” there is likely to be drastically different than the neighborhood which is literally just across the U.P. and BART tracks.

Please say again why a private enterprise hospital that can’t even be relied on to treat a life ending gunshot wound, let alone treat a majority of the property owners who pay and will pay for it in perpetuity yet cannot avail themselves of its services. Life just ain’t fair including paying taxes.

At least we will be able to park in the garage.

I know Beverly Johnson had that slogan, but that isn’t why we voted for her. It was more that she had a vision for the City of Alameda and the others didn’t. Without that slogan I believe the results would have been the same.

Oh, and since you decided to dredge up this old chestnut, please tell me again why a non-essential entertainment project deserves $1000 per household in public money.