The Making of a Market

Herb Childress T H E M A K I N G OF A M A R K E T Let me begin with what would normally be a conclusion: The Rockridge Market Hall in Oakland is an enormous success. The upscale food vendors are crowded at all hours. The coffee bars are filled, and the customers—bodi neighborhood residents and outside shoppers—spill out into the sidewalk along widi the smell of espresso and fresh bread. The restaurant at the corner draws turn-away crowds. The offices upstairs are all rented, and tenants express great satisfaction with their quarters. Real estate listings use proximity to the Market Hall as a selling point. The building gives a strong architectural focus to a busy and long neglected street corner and establishes a sound relationship with the rest of die build­ ings on the block. One might expect such a successful development to have had an easy time coming into existence and to have met with much approval along the way, but the Market Hall was almost four years in a troubled path to its creation. The story of its birth is actually three stories: The first is the ability of its creators to establish a vision and stick with it through the inevitably unpredictable development process; the second is the depth of opposition to the project by its prospective neigh­ bors. The third lies in the conjunction of the first two: What does the Rockridge Market Hall teach us about how we can create good places? The Resurgence of Rockridge Rockridge is a small neighborhood in northeast Oakland, built in the 1910s and 1920s as increasing automobile use allowed development to disperse from the city's center. All of the considerable commercial activity in Rockridge takes place on College Avenue, a two-lane street that leads from Broadway, Oakland's original main street, to the University of California campus in Berkeley. The rest of the neighborhood is residen­ tial, mostly modest one- or two-story California Craftsman bungalows, with a scattering of small apartment buildings and backyard second units. The neighborhood scene is pleasant in a Norman Rockwell-meets-Bernard Maybeck fashion. P L A C E S