Hard Habit to break

Last week at Alameda Landing Panda Express opened up rather unexpectedly without much fanfare. No over the top grand opening like Safeway and no giveaways to lure people in. It was small and low profile and I was shocked to see it open so quickly because last time I peek inside Habit Burger was fully decked out and the interior of Panda Express was still closed.

But today Habit Burger is going to have it’s grand opening and in a very classy move it’s donating 100% of the proceeds from the first few days lunch and dinner rush to local non profits.   Here’s the schedule if you want (1) burgers and (2) to give to a really good cause:

 

Very generous and awesome.

Balls of steel

On the lighter side today, today is the “soft opening” for the Alameda Landing Safeway.   The official grand opening is tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. but this afternoon at around 1:30 pm-ish the Alameda Landing Safeway will open and start serving the first new West End customers.

Oh, there will also be some kind of unveiling ceremony for the baseball sculpture at the corner of 5th and Stargell.   If you haven’t been around the Alameda Landing area lately — like in the past day or two lately — you wouldn’t have noticed that the landscaping in the Stargell Plaza has been installed and the metal art panels have been erected on Stargell itself behind the Safeway building.   By the way the art panels help to break up the bit of “endless wall” feel of the actual building itself.

Photos:

In your Transportation Element

During the second reading of Tuesday’s night’s meeting, Tony Daysog had, yet another, head scratching comment:

I can’t wait for our community to have this traffic/transit discussion because now we’re doing these TDMs as these projects here and there arise.  Alameda Point has its TDM, Alameda Landing has its TDM.  Northern Waterfront, Del Monte project has its TDM. And I do think that we have to be a lot more strategic in terms of planning.

Tony Daysog makes it sound as though Transportation Demand Management (TDM) plans are some bandage solution that is done in lieu of long term strategic planning.   It’s not.  Two years after Tony Daysog departed the City Council, the City started the process of updating the Transportation Element of the General Plan to talk about long term strategies, there’s a good overview about the Transportation Element EIR here.   The Transportation Element is the roadmap of sorts on how we tackle dealing with the inevitability of traffic in our City.  Maybe this is a part of the “discussion” that Tony Daysog wants to have, maybe it’s not, but it’s not clear that he understands the distinction.

The fast and the casual

Something light and fluffy to end the week on, plus, free-ish stuff.

At South Shore (by the way Best Lil Porkhouse is open, I haven’t had the chance to go yet we’re still making our way through Thanksgiving leftovers.  Seriously.) if you bring an unwrapped toy to the Little Ice Rink to donate to Toys for Tots you can get an awesome reusable “Alameda Island Shopper” bag.  See flier here.

Oh, also, I was going to post about the new stores that were slated for Alameda Landing, but between the election and Thanksgiving, I ran out of time.    When last we updated Panda Express and Sprint were the two newest additions to the list.

A few other retailers were added about a month ago:

Home with the range

On Saturday I swung by the Tri Pointe home first phase sale at Alameda Landing.  We got out a bit late because there were some disagreements about shoe tying.  So I think we hit the sales office at around 11:00 a.m. and saw a friend at the sales office.  It was super crowded but we hustled through and started looking through the models which were open for the very first time.  We only got through one of them when we were told that the rest were being “locked up” and that we could only tour them if we had one of the sales agents come through with us.  Apparently they aren’t officially open yet and had only been opened for the release of 14 home sites that day.

Anyway, what I did see, Residence 1, complete with optional third story pop up, was pretty nice.  The developer is clearly catering to folks with some bank because there were really nice finishes throughout and they had installed a Bertazzoni range in that model home which I’m sure does not come standard, but is a beautiful piece of equipment.

Like it’s 1999

There’s a thread on Alameda Peeps about Sila Nanotechnologies and the City proudly (with a good reason) announcing the arrival of this new business to Alameda.   I wrote about Sila Nanotechnologies coming to Alameda a few months ago after their application was submitted to build holding tanks for silane and nitrogen.   Just in case you were wondering where Sila Nanotechnologies would be located, they are going to occupy one of the buildings in the really odd parcel that site between the two tubes (for lack of a better marker).

Anyway, something came in the comments about Alameda as Silicon Island.  While this designation may be new to some folks, it has been around in the Alameda vocabulary  for a while as far back as 1999.   Here’s a bit of a flashback from an old SF Chronicle article about Alameda, highlights:

Like Mike

I dunno if it’s just me, or if it’s this election, or the fact that I’ve been away for the past few weeks, but I’m feeling super uninspired by this election.  Maybe because the candidates for City Council are just so meh.  The only thing that leaves me with a cold dread is the possibility that Trish Spencer could be our next Mayor.   On the bright side though, she has been on her very best behavior at the School Board meetings, I imagine that after the election if she is unsuccessful in her bid for the Mayor’s seat she’ll revert to the old Trish Spencer that we all have come to know.   Interestingly enough at the last School Board meeting she voted “yes” to the designs for the Encinal pool remodel but yet voted no again and again to the mechanism that actually would pay for the remodels.  In fact, she touts her opposition to the complicated land exchange between the City and the School District as a reason why people should vote for her.   That is where the money comes from the pay for the renovations.   But typically Trish Spencer, vote for the easy stuff to say you “supported” something, but then not for the means to pay for it.  Which is so like a “fiscal conservative,” eh?

But anyway, I’ve decided against writing out profiles for the School Board candidates.  Call it apathy, whatever.   Solana Henneberry will likely win because 1) female,  2) education background, and 3) support of the unions.   Gary Lym has hedged his support for the bond measure which tells me that he is Trish Spencer redux.

Every time Mike McMahon runs I always get a bit nervous for him.   Why?   Because he’s not the warmest or fuzziest of Board Members.  In fact sometimes he can come off as downright abrasive.  But ever since the departure of Ron Mooney from the School Board, Mike McMahon is the only one, the ONLY one, that really truly understands all the nuances of public school funding.   To lose that sort of expertise simply because he rubs some people the wrong way would be a tragedy for the School District.

Round round get around

This comment is a really good one about the sad state of Alameda’s transit planning:

That said, and turning to serious objections, the transit planning could be a lot more ambitious and thought of at the city level. Emeryville set up its shuttle system. The aim should be to get existing residents, not just new ones, out of their cars and onto buses, bikes and ferries. It’s very doable. And you don’t need to get too many to have a big effect of traffic at peak times: the effect of the marginal driver is greater than that of the earlier one.

Right now, we are relying, heavily, on grants and new developments to fund alternatives to AC Transit to get folks in select areas on the West End through the tube to get to Bart.  Perhaps, if residents would like an Emery-Go-Around type public transportation option we should encourage existing retail corridors and shopping centers to put money into a pool along with these sub areas to create a Alameda-Go-Round that would be free (or have a small surcharge) for Alameda residents in general.

Will you still need me, will you still feed me

On Sunday, City Councilmember Tony Daysog — who tweets a lot of truly random things — tweeted something that caught my eye:

Affordable Housing for Retirees http://t.co/FhkNkXC6qY

— tony daysog (@tonydaysog) September 21, 2014

The New York Times editorial board was the latest to weigh in on the need for affordable housing, but not just any sector of the population, but for our rapidly aging population of retirees.  This editorial follows a recently released report from the Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies: Housing America’s Older Adults. From the Editorial:

For various reasons, the next wave of retirees will be at greater risk of homelessness, hunger and other problems than their immediate predecessors. Fewer of them will benefit from traditional pensions, which are disappearing. Many lost their jobs during the recession and have exhausted their savings. And low-income homeowners who were counting on home equity to finance retirement lost nearly a third of their wealth.

One-third of adults over 50, and just over one-third of those over 80, are “rent burdened” and paying more than 30 percent of their income for housing. This often means they have to cut back on essentials like food and medications.

The Editorial goes on to say that the number of families requiring federal rent assistance is projected to grow exponentially in the next few decades even as rent subsidies of privately owned homes (Section 8) begins expiring and the public housing stock continues to decay.

Kung fu Panda Express

Remember how about a year ago when the Alameda Landing project came before the Planning Board to update the Board on their progress and one of the slides had indicated that Panda Express was going to be a retailer?

Then later the folks from Catellus said don’t pay attention to those labels those are just people we’re talking to but have yet to be confirmed.