"The City of Oakland Redevelopment Agency has big plans for the “urbanization” of auto row, which involves new buildings, parking garages and big-box stores. But as a state-wide budget crisis drains city coffers and new legislation threatens to dissolve redevelopment agencies altogether, those plans have fallen by the wayside. In their place, a crop of more organic economic developments driven by an assortment of artistically minded entrepreneurs is forging another vision of Auto Row. One in which bellowing industrial establishments sandwich petite, cultural enterprises—effectively mixing the old (and big) with the new (and small) to create a hybrid commercial corridor that keeps money flowing through the street from day to night and back again."
