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Shopping in Fruitvale Village

SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA

A Neglected Neighborhood Builds Itself a Village

Fruitvale Village may startle some visitors who see it for the first time from the platform of the BART train station in Oakland. From that vantage, the festive ‘’village’’ looks very much like an upscale suburban shopping center, set incongruously amid the brick buildings and dilapidated wooden houses of a once-fearsome neighborhood.

Beyond its good looks, the $60 million mixed-use development is also playing a catalytic role in one of the poorest neighborhoods of this Bay Area city, directly east of San Francisco.

Even before it was completed in May [2004], Fruitvale Village -- with 45,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space, a nonprofit clinic, a child-care center for 300 children, a public library, 47 apartments for both low-income and market-rate renters and 45,000 square feet of office space -- had already primed a depressed and neglected neighborhood for a blast of new development, according to Ignacio De La Fuente, the Oakland city councilman who represents the area.

“The village is already a success,” said the councilman, who has championed the project in the neighborhood known locally as the Fruitvale.

City officials also report that the Fruitvale, a densely populated, largely Latino neighborhood of 53,000 people amid a city of 400,000 residents, now produces the second-highest level of sales tax among Oakland’s neighborhoods, exceeded only by affluent Rockridge.

Along International Boulevard, the street that borders the 13-acre development, the vacancy rate in commercial buildings is 1 percent. About a decade ago, it was 40 percent.

Fruitvale Village was conceived and built by the Unity Council, a community development corporation, in an innovative partnership with BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and the City of Oakland. Financing came from nearly 30 different sources, including grants and loans from the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and Living Cities, as well as private foundations and public money from the city, state, and federal government.