Oakland Creating High-Tech Environment
<B> Oakland Creating High-Tech Environment</B>
By Judy Jacobs
Under the leadership of Mayor Jerry Brown, Oakland is creating the infrastructure that is expected to make it a center for high-tech business. Several new hotels and an expanded airport will help lure an increasing number of business travelers to a city that, together with San Francisco, San Jose and countless smaller suburbs, make up the San Francisco Bay Area.
Following in the footsteps of the Silicon Valley and parts of San Francisco, Oakland is making efforts to attract computer and software companies. "Oakland is becoming a high-tech mecca in terms of office use and meeting space," said William Claggett, agency director of the city's Community & Economic Development Agency. "It's a positive alternative to San Francisco, which is becoming priced out of many budgets."
Two new hotels are gearing up for business travelers. One of them, a Courtyard by Marriott, will open in the heart of Oakland's business district. Construction on the 160-room hotel is scheduled to begin early next year and be completed in mid-2001. "We expect to have a good mix of corporate business and small meetings," said Bill Morton, senior vice president of Park Lane Hotels, which will own the hotel. Plans call for several small meeting rooms and a boardroom.
The second new hotel being developed in Oakland, a Hilton Gardens, will be located in the historic Key System Building. Originally built in 1911, the 220-room hotel will include two meeting rooms, accommodating up to 50 attendees, and is scheduled to be ready in 2001.
Meanwhile, downtown's largest hotel, the Oakland Marriott has seen an increase in business. "Demand in downtown Oakland has been on the upswing because of the business development taking place here," said Cliff Clark, the hotel's general manager. "We can sell out the hotel from Monday to Thursday. It's a business hotel during the week and a convention center hotel at the end of the week and on the weekends. We're attracting a lot more state and national associations, as well as an increasing number of corporate trade shows."
The other major area of development in Oakland is around the Oakland Airport, spurred by a $750 million expansion that will begin next spring and increase the airport from its current capacity of 10 million passengers per year to 13.8 million.
Meanwhile, the additional business travelers brought to Oakland's expanded airport will have a wider choice of accommodations in the neighborhood. The 70-room Holiday Inn Express, which opened this spring on a site adjacent to the airport, is the first new hotel to open in Oakland in 10 years. Facilities include a full-service business center, dataports in every guest room and 2,000 square feet of meeting space, as well as a board room seating 25 people. Besides the Holiday Inn Express, several other hotels are in the early planning stages for the vicinity of the airport.
Not far from West Oakland in the neighboring city of Emeryville, the new Woodfin Suite hotel, Emeryville will open next May. The site for the 212-suite hotel sits across the way from Emeryville's Amtrak railway station and is in the heart of the city's burgeoning high-tech office district.
"The new hotel will attract Sunday to Thursday corporate business and extended-stay guests, who will stay between five and 30-plus nights," said Dan McFate, the hotel's vice president of new hotel operations. "The suites are tailored for extended stay, with separate living and dining areas and fully equipped kitchens. They also have 50 to 100 more square feet than the average long-stay Residence Inn. In addition, the hotel will include 2,000 to 3,000 square feet of meeting space and will be targeting small corporate meetings of 20 to 75 attendees.