Temescal is where it's at
Business Improvement District helps turn 94609 into one of Oakland's trendiest ZIP codes
By Laura Casey, STAFF WRITER
Oakland Tribune, Aug. 7, 2005

OAKLAND - On a recent, warm, Friday night, nearly every restaurant on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland's Temescal district had at least a half-hour wait to be seated.

Lines of people — the fashionably hip, young families and older fine diners — were waiting outside mainstays Dona Tomas and Tanjia's while others spent part of their evening queued for a table in the district's newer restaurants, Lanesplitter and Pizzaiolo.

Judging from the life on the street and the amount of new businesses moving in, Temescal is no longer the "up-and-coming" place to be in Oakland. It is a destination.

"This restaurant has become the place I wanted to go to that was never available for me to go to," Pizzaiolo owner Charles Hallowell said one sunny afternoon while planning the evening's menu.

Hallowell, formerly a chef at Chez Panisse, said he has been working 17-hour days since the restaurant opened early this summer.

His work appears to be paying off. While taking a short break around lunchtime, Claussen House manager James Mousigian strolled into the restaurant and asked when Pizzaiolo would be open for lunch. Some would say Mousigian was pleading with Hallowell to offer noontime faire.

Not that there isn't anywhere else to get food on the street.

Alison Barakat and Michael Camp were looking for an exciting neighborhood to call home when they decided to turn their Bakesale Betty products, sold at farmers markets, into a bakery store.

"The whole area in general appealed to us," Camp said as he stood among the bakery's silver tins of banana bread and sugar-sprinkled scones.

"It is so vibrant. The whole neighborhood is wonderful," he added.

One after another, customers came into the small shop and commented on the sweet smell of cinnamon and ginger while accepting a sample of Bakesale Betty's chocolate brownies, cookies and other treats.

"I am enjoying how the Temescal is developing," said resident Jessica Van Tuyl, who picked up a snack at the bakery. "There are a lot of great new businesses coming in."

In fact, ever since the area established the Temescal/Telegraph Avenue Business Improvement District, changes to the areahave been measurable. The business district's streets and sidewalks are cleaner. Its street furniture has been cleaned of graffiti. Signs on light poles indicate to visitors that they are, in fact, in the district that was once a predominantly Italian neighborhood.

The City Council established the Business Improvement District at its final meeting in July 2004. The district taxes 211 property owners along Telegraph Avenue, from 40th Street to the Berkeley border, and properties along Shattuck Avenue.

Darlene Rios Drapkin, BID manager, said Temescal business owners would like to see the area become Oakland's newest center for gourmet dining and fine shopping.

"We want to create a food and cultural mecca," she said.

She said BID members eventually want to have more sidewalk seating so diners and shoppers will "hang out" on the street more.

BID drew thousands of people to the area last month when it helped put on the Temescal Street Fair. District restaurants and shops offered specials to visitors while Oakland musicians, dancers and children's performers provided entertainment.

"There is definitely some positive energy on the street," Rios Drapkin said.

Developers and home buyers are pinning their hopes on the area as well. Townhomes and lofts in Temescal Place — the first new cluster of homes built in the area in decades — sold immediately for about $500,000 each when they went on the market a year ago. Now a three-bedroom townhome in the same building is going for more than $700,000.

Temescal Place was developed by Roy Alper, who has lived in Temescal since 1956. Alper has purchased the empty lot on the corner of 51st Street and Telegraph, once the Pussycat Theater, to build even more townhouses and retail space.

"I think this is one of the most ideal locations in the entire Bay Area to live, and the more people who find out about it, the more people want to live here," he said. "It is right in the middle of everything."