This is great news. The current issue with Downtown Oakland is that there are pockets of cool places but they aren't necessarily next to each other. Jack London Square (where Centrro resides) is up and coming while the Uptown area has its own bustling restaurant/bar scene. The free shuttle that will run up and down Broadway from JLS to Uptown (and all points in between) will help get more cross pollination of people between these two areas. Plus, it'll be a great way to move people from BART to their respective destinations. I'm toying with the idea of walking from my place in Rockridge down to Uptown and taking the shuttle the rest of the way to JLS. Would be a great way to exercise and save on gas/pollution/etc.

Cupkates made a stop in Jack London Square today. Picking up an order for the wife.

So it took me a few days, but here are some shots of the new office. In the week or so that we've been here, the building was renamed from the original "The London Building" at 160 Franklin to now being known as "The Commons at Jack London Square" as to incorporate the three buildings on the block (160 Franklin, 140 Franklin, and 384 Embarcadero West). Here are some exterior shots of the new mural painted alongside the back of the three buildings:

As I said earlier, the inside is currently being renovated to reflect a more minimalistic industrial design. The great thing is the original brick is still maintained. Here are some hallway and stairwell shots.

Our suite is pretty simple. Couple of private offices and a large open area. We're not fans of private offices so we're using one as a conference room and another may house 2-3 folks. Our landlords at Equistone were nice enough to provide us with some desks, chairs, and a conference table. Still need to get some more desks for the open area and some whiteboards. Not entirely visible are the four large skylights that bathe the suite in natural light. For most of the day, we never turn on any of the fluorescents. That'll probably change as we enter the winter months but the spring/summer months should provide enough natural light for the entire day. An amazing suite in the building that was recently renovated has glass walls for each of the offices so the natural light flows from the ceiling and the office windows. Maybe if we expand, we'll ask for these TI's in our next space.

Part of the charm of the neighborhood is that we're in the heart of the Produce District. Below is a shot from our conference room of the warehouses just outside of the building. From midnight to about 10am, there is a bustling produce trade with goods being trucked in from all across California and the Port of Oakland. Small grocery store owners and restaurants come by to get their produce for the day. Taco trucks and other street food vendors set up shop during this busy time to support the workers in the area.

Finally, some pictures of our view outside of the conference room of Downtown Oakland and the Oakland Hills.

It seems like only yesterday that we moved but now we're at it again. After the BarNone acquisition, we were starting to get very cramped in our current shared office space. Thankfully, we were able to sign a lease in a great building just a few blocks away. The London Building is just across the street from the Barnes and Noble in Jack London Square, right in the heart of the produce district. It's been newly renovated and is LEED certified with the latest green features. Our top floor suite has a ton of natural light and beautiful exposed brick on one side. Our official move in date is Monday so I'll snap a few shots then and post here.

I'm having breakfast at the Chop Bar here on 4th and Alice in Oakland - new breakfast/sandwich place that opened up right across from our offices. So far so good. Good breakfast items and great croissants. Plus, free drip coffee on Mondays!

I'm hoping this place sticks around. The location has turned over a few restaurants in the time we've been in the area.

Just got back from the Eat Real Festival in Jack London Square. It was way too hot and way too crowded (good for Oakland, bad for us). Friday was a much better day to go even if there was no savory food vendors setup. Not as hot and not as crowded. Anyway, ice cream and beer - what more do you need?

Took a walk down to Barnes and Noble in Jack London. Decided to snap a few pics along the way.

Here's a few shots of the area right outside of B&N.

Next took a walk down to check out the new Jack London Market. Last shot is of Heinold’s First and Last Chance Saloon near the base of the Jack London Market; an old school bar - 126 years old to be exact!

Here are some shots of the new Jack London Market itself. Still not yet open for business as the economy has derailed some of the tenants that were hoping to move in this summer. As such, final interior work has been greatly delayed as the landlords figure out who is going to occupy the lower market floors, as well as the upper office space. When we first were looking at office space a year ago, word was that office space would top $4 per square foot. Fast forward a year later, that number is down to about $3 but still no takers. One of the reasons is that they want to rent large blocks of space (25K minimum) instead of opening it up to smaller tenants. I give them another 3 months before that attitude and the price changes.

Exterior shots of the Northern side including shots from the top of the stairs.

Eastern side with the roll up doors for food vendors to bring in their goods.

The interior of the ground floor where all the small market vendors will be situated.

Shots of the Amtrak station and walking bridge across from the Eastern side.

Southern side of the building. Third shot is of an art piece done by Roger Stoller, a Silicon Valley product designer turned sculptor.

Western side of the building with a similar set of stairs to the Northern side.

Interior shots of the second floor. This is where the many restaurants and coffee shops will be. As you can see, very unfinished.

Amid all the running back and forth of the holidays and an upcoming board meeting, I forgot to mention that Centrro moved offices. We're now in more "professional" settings though still with a small office feel. We didn't go very far, about a block and a half away (from 3rd Street to 4th Street). We're still in shared office space but the building we're in has cubes, a reception area, kitchen, and nice conference rooms. Our office mates are a real estate investor and a couple of lawyers. The owner of the building (and one of our office mates) did a great job renovating the space. Our area is just below a nice skylight so we get a ton of natural light. I was telling Ike that our old offices had these fluorescent bulbs that were slowly killing our brain cells. We literally could feel ourselves getting more and more forgetful and were having trouble coming up with words to describe things.
 
We toured numerous office spaces in Jack London Square and Old Oakland. I can tell the economy is going downhill as I've never seen so many nice Class B+/A office spaces available. We even had brokers telling us to craft unique deals with landlords like paying for only a portion of the space in the first year, then slowly increasing the amount of space we'd "occupy" until we were paying on the full space towards the last year of the lease. Others were just telling us to make an offer ... any offer.
 
We chose shared space once again because we're still trying to keep things lean but also because we're waiting for the new Jack London Market to go online in the first half of 2009. It's a mixed use project that incorporates the largest open air market on the West Coast (bigger than the Ferry Building or Pike Place - see last photo) plus about 100,000 square feet of office space. Not to say we're going to be able to afford an office there but I'm betting that their will be a migration up from existing tenants of Class B+/A space to the JLM building. This is going to flood the market with even more good office space in the area which will put us in a better position to negotiate a good deal sometime in 2009.