Fruitvale Village replaces park-and-ride

When the Bay Area Rapid Transit system announced in 1991 that it wanted to build a parking garage next to its station in the Fruitvale section of Oakland, the Spanish Speaking Unity Council said no, there must be a better idea. Fourteen years later, the better idea has taken physical form: a stylish four-story complex called Fruitvale Village, which contains 47 apartments, 40,000 square feet of retail space, and 114,000 square feet of office and commercial space. From the station, fourth busiest in the East Bay, commuters can walk through a plaza lined with eating places, a shoe store, a record store, FedEx, a dry cleaner, and other retail and service businesses. Those who live in Fruitvale Village go upstairs to 37 apartments of 800 to 1,100 square feet renting for $1,100 to $1,800 a month, and 10 subsidized apartments that rent for less. The Oakland Public Library operates its Cesar E. Chavez Branch at the complex’s western end. The Fruitvale Bike Station supervises free indoor parking for 236 bicycles in addition to repairing bikes and selling bike supplies. Dental offices, an optometrist, a senior center, Head Start, a bridal shop, and the offices of Unity Council are among the other offerings rounding out the Village. From the retail plaza, a pedestrian passage called Avenida de la Fuentes leads to International Boulevard, a busy shopping thoroughfare serving a district that is 52 percent Latino, 23 percent Asian, 16 percent African-American, and 7 percent white. Poverty and crime — the station had the second-highest crime rate in the BART system in the early 1990s — made it hard for some to grasp the possibility of establishing a lively transit-oriented development on what had been parking lots in a tough location. But Arabella Martinez, CEO of Unity Council, persevered. Eventually BART agreed to build its parking garage on a different property. Unity Council formed the Fruitvale Development Corp., which built the $100 million project on land that is leased from BART for 95 years. At Unity Council’s urging, the city adopted a zoning ordinance banning construction of any additional parking immediately around the transit village. Arguments for the ban emphasized the desire for less traffic congestion, better air quality, and a pedestrian-oriented atmosphere. Aiding revitalization “It is a beautiful development,” says Gilda Gonzales, who became CEO after Martinez retired a few months ago. “It has added value in the revitalization of the Fruitvale neighborhood. It has brought outside money and outside folks that would not have come otherwise.” Grand openings took place in October 2003 and again in May 2004 as retailers gradually moved in. It took a year to get the market-rate apartments 100 percent rented, according to Gonzales, and office and retail leasing has remained “challenging.” As of early March, 20,000 square feet of commercial space and about 5,000 square feet of retail remained to be leased. “Now we’re in the real work of making it viable,” she says of the nonresidential part of the project. Many commuters who drive to the station don’t patronize the businesses a great deal. “Coming through the plaza there is not that much foot traffic,” she says, even though there is “a tremendous amount [of foot traffic] on the fringes.” Unity Council hired Allan Jacobs and Elizabeth Macdonald of Jacobs Macdonald: Cityworks to design the retail plaza and the pedestrian passage and to redesign a two-block segment of International Boulevard, formerly 14th Street. The designers narrowed the street and installed a landscaped median 12 feet wide, with benches at each end. Jacobs says the changes are starting to make an impact. “On International Boulevard, the traffic goes pretty slowly. Traffic used to race through there,” he observes. “People are beginning to use the median for walking.” The pedestrian pass-through “has just been built,” Jacobs says, and “is going to get uses opening onto it. It needs more transparency and uses.” Gonzales says the crime situation now is “really mild, considering the demographics.” Business on International Boulevard has been improving, she says, and Fruitvale’s image as “a poor immigrant neighborhood” is evolving, with people “seeing it as a viable, up-and-coming neighborhood.” She anticipates that marketing efforts will bring more BART riders into the retail plaza, perhaps with the aid of activities such as a farmers’ market. Long-term plans call for Fruitvale Development to construct more than 200 housing units on four nearby acres of surface parking. That will strengthen the center, says Jacobs, adding, “You’ve got to give these things a bit of time.” u