Cooking up casual on the waterfront
Jack London Square is moving away from fine dining
In recent months, on days when the East Bay weather was agreeable, it wasn’t unusual for Rick Hackett to walk around Uptown Oakland, counting the number of people traversing the 2200 block of Broadway.
Hackett noticed foot traffic was four to five times greater than what is normally seen near his Pan-Latin restaurant at Jack London Square, Bocanova, which opened eight years ago. This month, Hackett announced he would close Bocanova and reopen it in the Broadway neighborhood he has watched so closely.
“The economics are the biggest reason why I had to make this decision,” he said.
Hackett’s restaurant joins a recent flurry of closures at Jack London Square. His other waterfront restaurant, Jack’s Oyster Bar and Fish House, closed late last year, two years after it opened across from Bocanova. Earlier this year also saw the closures of Encuentro, a wine bar and vegetarian restaurant, and Il Pescatore, which opened more than 30 years ago. Daniel Patterson’s Haven, which opened in 2011, has been on hiatus since February.
The closures are part of a culinary changing of the guard at the revitalizing 434,000-square-foot Jack London Square, because a
“Right now, there’s an ownership at Jack London Square that gets it, essentially. They see consumers want an organic and local experience.” Chris Jordan, chief operating officer at Tartine, which is opening a 5,000-square-foot Coffee Manufactory
new generation of food and drink businesses is moving in: Burmese restaurant Grocery Cafe, Coffee Manufactory (Tartine Bakery’s roasting operation) and sustainable meat specialist Belcampo. Nearby, urban winery Brooklyn West and Irish bar Sláinte opened in April.
The new tenants represent an ongoing shift from higherend restaurants to more casual, everyday concepts that it is hoped will attract more daily foot traffic, not just destination evening diners.
Plank, the sprawling restaurant with a bowling alley and beer garden that opened in the former Barnes & Noble space in 2014, was a catalyst for the casual movement. It was one of the first such projects on the waterfront to quickly gain and sustain its popularity.
However, the recent surge in development comes too late for the generation of restaurants that signed on to the square a decade ago. Hackett said that Bocanova rode waves of growth and stagnation, witnessed grand plans turn to unfulfilled promises. But as rent increased, operating costs doubled and foot traffic on the south side of Jack London Square declined, remaining open became an arduous task.
“I could have lived with it,” Hackett said, “if everything that was promised out here had happened.”
Since the mid-2000s, plans have circulated for a substantial food market at Jack London Square, only a few dozen yards from Bocanova. Billed as Oakland’s counterpart to San Francisco’s Ferry Building, the project’s last significant step toward realization came in 2015, when well-known developer Steve Carlin, who previously worked on the Ferry Building and Napa’s Oxbow Public Market, signed on.
The most recent plan was to have the 32,000-square-foot project, called Water Street Market, open last year amid a flurry of other debuts. (Plank, Lungomare and the Forge pizzeria all opened on time and remain in business.)
Last year, national developer CIM Group purchased the Jack London Square property in a $131 million deal and obtained long-term development rights for the land from the Port of Oakland. Water Street Market remained in limbo during the transition. Steve Carlin’s team eventually dropped the project.
“We signed new deals in Sonoma and Austin, Texas, so (we) just got busy on other projects while Jack London Square was being sold,” Carlin said in an email.
Jack London Square officials said Tartine’s Coffee Manufactory will be the first tenant in the cavernous Water Street Market space and that the move represents “the beginning of a long-term vision” for the area.
“It’s hard to grow these types of communities in the right way,” said Chris Jordan, Tartine’s chief operating officer. The roasting company’s new 5,000-square-foot facility will double as its headquarters and will also have a retail component. “Right now, there’s an ownership at Jack London Square that gets it, essentially. They see consumers want an organic and local experience.”
A Ferry Building-like market may have been a boon to Bocanova and its contemporary neighbors, but Hackett said he couldn’t afford to sign a new lease in hopes that it would come together. Bocanova will be replaced by Belcampo, the popular butcher shop and restaurant with locations in San Francisco, Larkspur, Palo Alto and Los Angeles.
“I always thought Jack London Square had beautiful bones, beautiful architecture. There was a certain elegance to the space,” said Belcampo co-founder Anya Fernald.
According to Fernald, Jack London Square has potential to be a prodigious destination neighborhood in an East Bay area populated with foodcentric micro-neighborhoods like the Gourmet Ghetto in Berkeley and Rockridge in Oakland. But the evolution is different.
“It’s a developer-driven project,” she said. “When it’s organic, you don’t realize the time is passing, like with Temescal,” referring to the Oakland neighborhood that has become a hotbed for craft beer, with Temescal Brewing, Arthur Mac’s, Hog’s Apothecary and Rose’s Taproom.
The process, she said, just takes patience.
Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, the combination Japanese restaurant and jazz club, has been the area’s most recognizable tenant since arriving in 1997 as part of an early Port of Oakland revitalization project.
Patience, for the Yoshi’s team, is in short supply.
“We’ve seen so many restaurants come and go,” said Hal Campos, who has been the venue’s general manager for the past seven years. “And I hear that all the drama about this is going to happen and that will happen. Nothing ever happens.”
Campos said the changes have to happen quickly if the area wants to capitalize on the increased attention. For example, it’s a good time to try different ways to attract small businesses — Grocery Cafe was reportedly offered a ninemonth lease that includes two months rent-free and an option for a five-year extension.
“I’m a dreamer, too. But I also have my feet on the ground,” Campos said.
Last month, CIM unveiled plans to construct a pair of apartment buildings in the neighborhood that, together, would house over 400 units, in addition to dedicated retail space. The project would increase foot traffic at Jack London Square.
While continuing to organize the relocation of Bocanova, Hackett said he heard about the pending projects. Three years after opening his second restaurant at Jack London Square, he finds himself walking away with thoughts of what could have been, while new tenants are flocking to the property, hopeful for what’s to come.
“Jack London Square will develop by default. But it probably won’t happen for another five or six years,” he said. “I can’t wait that long.”