Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Oakland Waterfront Plan Approved

SFgate had an article today saying that..

The Oakland City Council early this morning approved the controversial Oak to Ninth development south of Jack London Square, a 64-acre project that will help transform the waterfront as the city's largest housing development since World War II.

The council's 6-to-0 vote supporting the project came a day after a coalition of affordable housing, open space and local hiring advocates -- working with Councilwoman Pat Kernighan, whose district includes the project -- gave the project their blessing.

The groups, the city and Ghielmetti agreed to have 465 of the 3,100 housing units on the project be made affordable to families earning between $25,000 and $50,000 a year, as well as hiring 300 Oakland residents as apprentices in the building trades.

Ghielmetti said he expects to break ground in late 2007 after a series of approvals from other government agencies. The project will include 200,000-square feet of retail and 30 acres of parks and trails, a 170-slip marina, and restored wetlands accessible by the public.

It will take 15 years to develop, although Ghielmetti said he expects the first residents to move there in 2010.


I spent most of the day yesterday in San Francisco with Mark Choey checking out what's going on in the world of new developments. There's some great stuff happening down there and I'm glad to see that it's not confined to that side of the bay.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Brainjams: Rent an Expert

Looking to add something new to your technology repertoire? Maybe your stuck at a roadblock and getting frustrated? Maybe you have technical expertise coming out of your ears and want to share some of it?

If so, come on out to the Rent an Expert event next Thursday.
Rent an Expert is an event where people who want to help others do or learn something offer their services to the members of the community for a very small fee. All the money collected will be donated to a charity that is chosen by all participants. Some examples of what might be offered include: how to setup a blog, how to get the most from shortcuts in Photoshop, configure a Drupal community, redesign a Web site, customize a WordPress theme, create a survey, optimize AdSense ads, figure out tagging, how to shoot better photographs or just about anything really - even non-technical things like how to write a press release.

The event is co-sponsored by BrainJams and MindJet and will be held on next Thursday, June 15th from 530PM till 900PM in San Francisco. Please RSVP on the Wiki if you're coming.