Mason helps restore community

May 21, 2004

Oakley's redevelopment director, Ellen Bonneville, left a few months back to find greener, "less stressful" pastures in Brentwood. While she has been gone the department's work has not gone by the wayside, according to Barbara Mason, the city's interim redevelopment director.

Mason came on board a couple of months ago to help out until a new director could be hired. With 34 projects going on in the redevelopment department the city needed someone with experience to take over the work of helping to retore our community and to make it bigger and brighter.

Mason said that she will be one of the applicants who wish to take on the job full time. It appears that the Brentwood resident is quite qualified for the position and more important she has had a chance to see what she is getting herself into.

"It's really been a good match. I'm looking at this as a trial run. I needed to make sure there were ways that I could contribute to the community," Mason said.

Mason's background has consisted of working of 15 years in historic downtown revitilation. Her vast experience includes working in Sacramento as the state director of the California Main Street Program. Before that she worked on the Livermore Main Street Program. She has also worked with similar programs in both Sonora and Jamestown. The Main Street program is a lot like a redevelopment program. The project was started several years back as a way to help promote and revitalize historic downtown areas.

"The Bay Area economic boom is spreading into Oakley and we have to be prepared for it," Mason said. "Oakley is an awesome community positioned to do great things in the next five years."

Currently, Mason said that 95 percent of Oakley's properties are already contracted out for residential and commercial development. Most of the retail space is filled with only a one percent vacancy rate, but the city is constantly getting letters of interest from different developers looking to bring businesses here to Oakley.

With the City's Civic Center beginning construction in three weeks and the first block of improvements happening, Mason believes that Oakley is in for some very exciting things to come in the future.

Presently redevelopment has $500,000 to work with to begin making road improvements to the downtown area. It won't be the expansion of the Highway 4/Main Street roadway that we have all been looking forward to for the past 15 years or so. That work isn't expected to start for at least another decade. It will include a new traffic signal at O'Hara Avenue and Main Street, however, and some other improvements.

One of the projects that the redevelopment agency has been working heavily on for the past few weeks are some changes to the city's Web site that they hope will attract new developers to the area.

The changes include a lot of redevelopment information including how to grow existing businesses. A lot of the city's documentation and applications have been added along with information on properties for sale for commercial and light industrial sites.

They also have included statistics like top 10 sales tax producers in the city, a place where visitors to the site can see where permits are being held on which sites, as well as zoning maps for the general plan. All information that Mason said developers are looking for when coming to an area.

"Everything looks really good to do what everyone wants to do," Mason said. "Just remember that everything has to be taken in baby steps. It takes time."

Roni Gehlke's column on life in Oakley appears each week in the Brentwood News.

Distributed by the Contra Costa Times

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