Merchants Head Downtown As Oakland Gains New Luster

In the last five years, 140 new ground-floor retail stores have opened in the downtown and Uptown areas of Oakland, said Steve Snider, district manager of Lake Merritt/Uptown District and Downtown Oakland associations. Merchants who once avoided the downtown and Uptown areas are now drawn by available storefronts, easy access to transit, and a growing number of shoppers who discover the stores at the popular First Friday street parties or sneak out of the corporate offices of Pandora or Ask.com to shop on their lunch breaks. “And that’s just because the number of business that have opened over the last year, to be quite honest,” said Janice Yenpasook, the owner of Merkado, a gift store that opened two months ago and sells local art and jewelry. Many neighborhoods in Oakland are changing as housing prices rise and many young people who can’t afford condos or apartments in San Francisco discover the warm weather and spunky vibe of Oakland. In downtown and Uptown in particular, the 10,000 new housing units built in the last 10 years and the revival of concert venues like the Fox Theater have drawn new energy to the area. [...] all those new diners and drinkers are starting to go shopping before or after their meal, said Raquel Conte, who has owned OwlNWood, a local apparel store in the Uptown area, since 2012. For retail, I think we are still growing; I think there are still stores opening up; restaurants and bars are hopping right now. “There is definitely that underlying worry that very soon it is going to be unaffordable for people, and in some cases people are going to be priced out of spaces that they got into years ago,” Conte said.