Will Housing Displace Ace Hardware?

The Oakland A’s play their last game at the Coliseum this week. The prelude to that happened 25 years ago when Oakland City Manager Robert Bobb and Mayor Jerry Brown feuded over downtown development. Bobb wanted to redevelop the area between 880 and the Fox Theater for a downtown baseball stadium while Brown wanted 10,000 new housing units in the downtown. Brown won, Bobb left and the rest is history. Given the current state of Oakland and the glut of housing, one wonders if Oakland made the right decision. A’s ownership hasn’t helped but smaller, inner-city stadiums have been successful.

Which brings us to Ace Hardware. With the adoption of the Housing Element and other policies, City Hall seems to be doing all it can to chase that business out of town. Because staff didn’t account for any housing growth in the civic center area, more density was added for development in the Grand Avenue multi-use zone and Moraga Canyon sites to meet HCD housing numbers. Higher density makes the Ace site more attractive for development, development for which no off-street parking is required. Likewise, staff underestimated the number of Accessory Dwelling Units and SB9 housing that would be built in Piedmont, furthering the need to increase building density in the multi-use zone. ADU numbers are well ahead of projections and if staff and the consultants had made a better case for ADU and SB9 growth to HCD, density of the multi-use zone need not have been increased.

Now the City is on the verge of approving an EV charging hub at the site of the old Wildwood Shell. There’s no question more charging capacity is needed for the Bay area but the location of that hub adjacent to Ace is a boon to developers who now won’t have to provide on-site charging. And there will be ample street parking up and down Fairview Avenue.

Piedmont housing advocates are fond of quoting Joni Mitchell’s famous lyric, “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”, in support of new housing throughout Piedmont. One wonders if they or City Hall understand how important Ace Hardware is to Piedmonters. I won’t go to Vegas to see the A’s but if I have to go to Home Depot to get a light bulb, I’ll blame City Hall for poor planning.