San Lorenzo center to include restaurant

Oakland Tribune, Oct 5, 2007 by Rachel Cohen

SAN LORENZO -- Fewer townhomes and an 8,000 square-foot space for a restaurant at the northwest intersection of Hesperian Boulevard and Paseo Grande are included in the most recent plans for downtown.

Eileen Dalton, director of the Alameda County Redevelopment Agency, said Wednesday that the county and its contracted redeveloper, Civic Partners, reduced the plans for 50 townhomes to 36 to make room for the restaurant.

The townhomes and the restaurant will be across the street from a new Lucky supermarket built by SaveMart, which has agreed to move a few blocks down Hesperian from its current location south of Interstate 238.

The supermarket building pad is set to be delivered in June 2008, and the 52,000-square-foot store will be built over the next nine months, Dalton said.

The store is intended to anchor the new downtown and will stand where the original Mervyns department store once reigned in the 1950s and 1960s.

In evaluating its new site plans, SaveMart also realized that it would need more parking, Dalton said. A pad of retail was removed from the corner so that the new Lucky store and its parking lot will fill up the whole block.

The shopping center across from the restaurant space and supermarket will be renovated in an architectural design to bring the whole area together.

For now, though, the redevelopment agency is nearly through a 90- day period, which began July 31, to draw up an agreement that would lay out in detail the development's schedule and costs. The plan encompasses a 19-acre lot on the east and west sides of Hesperian that has been designated as part of the county's redevelopment zone in the county's general plan.

The land is owned by the Bohannon family, which initially developed the San Lorenzo Village in the 1940s. Dalton said the Bohannons plan to close on the sale of the land to the county by Dec. 31.

Dalton reported that the redevelopment agency, Civic Partners and the Bohannons met Oct. 1, have another meeting scheduled for Oct. 15, and that they definitely will be moving into a second 90-day period.

She e-mailed the most recent site plans to the citizens advisory committee Thursday and said she would provide a fuller site plan update at its next meeting in November.