Oakley needs a slice of the business-growth pieOakley needs a slice of the business-growth pieJuly 23, 2004
Development is running rampant in our midst and if Oakley doesn’t move more quickly it could be left in the dust where the only thing left to build are houses and schools to accommodate all of the families. Reviewing the past two decades in East Contra Costa County shows a pattern of great growth. We can all see it. All we have to do is drive down Lone Tree Way or get on to Highway 4 to go to work.
To the credit of Antioch, Brentwood and Pittsburg, that growth has been planned. Whether some consider it intelligent or not is another story all together. The point is that over the past 20 years these cities have had time to plan their growth, court the businesses and cultivate sources for new development. The problem in Oakley is that we haven't had that same luxury. In five years the only growth worth speaking of has been houses, and since some of those developments were already in the works, the city officials had no choice but to let them go through.
In the meantime, in the past year Brentwood has built three new shopping centers and, yes, a considerable amount of new houses. In those new developments they have added some "big box" stores. Adding these big stores, like WinCo or TJ Max, offered more of an opportunity for employment of the residents for sure, but was it in the numbers needed for all of the new growth? Let's be realistic, a person who received a $10-$12 an hour job at WinCo or even one of the Antioch stores is not likely to be able to afford to buy one of the nice $350,000 new homes being built in Brentwood.
Oakley has come in far behind, to no fault of its own, really. The city officials, although they have been working to catch up, are so far behind that the chances are all the "big box" retailers will have saturated the area and there will be no room left for Oakley.
Recent rumors of a new Costco as part of a 1 million-square-foot piece of development in the northeast end of Antioch is just another case in point. So far there are two Mervyn's, two Targets, two Home Depots with a close-by Lowe's for competition, and two Walmarts, with a discussion for a new location for a Super Walmart somewhere in the vicinity. Even a new Macy’s will be opening at the end of this month in the former County East Mall. All of these stores have moved into the area with a promise of growth in Brentwood and Antioch.
They don't seem yet to see the potential in Oakley. More than likely it is because the expected growth isn't as high here. With all of these stores moving in, as well as some that we haven't even seen yet, like the Khol's that is expected to open soon next to Home Depot in Antioch, just what "big box" are city officials hoping to attract to Oakley? It seems most are taken up already, and if they aren't, Antioch and Brentwood seem to already have been primed to pull them in.
While I don't dispute that the Oakley's officials have been working hard to bring the "big box" to Oakley by attending the same conferences the other local cities are attending and working to develop the right contacts, the others definitely have the leg up. Mostly because they have the other businesses to back them up. Oakley also has another problem to contend with at this time -- some of those "big boxes" are already complaining that they aren't getting the amount of business they had hoped for. Mostly because growth hasn't had a chance to fill out to the expected amounts yet. Now there is even some worry that some cities like Antioch will start to come up against opposition against growth. Brentwood may be next. Most of the opposition isn't even about land use, but about traffic woes that don't seem to have any chance of changing in the near future.
Here is something for Oakley city officials to think about: Oakley could be a big hero if it stopped thinking about the "big box" and started to think about industry and bringing in some large business-related conglomerate that brought high-paying jobs to support the high cost of local housing. Rumors have it that they have been working on this.
As much as I would hate to see some big highrise over my back fence on the DuPont property, it is something that would benefit not only our community, but also those communities around us. It is a tough task and a big challenge for every city official in the state, but we have some smart officials and council members who are up for the task.
Roni Gehlke's column on life in Oakley appears each week in the Brentwood News.
Distributed by the Contra Costa Times