Could Free Rent Bring Oakland's Downtown to Life?

OAKLAND--The city of Oakland wants to emerge as the Brooklyn to San Francisco's Manhattan. It's getting there. Thanks to a hipster exodus from more expensive San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Silicon Valley, a lot of tattooed millennials are riding around downtown Oakland on fixed-gear bikes. The bar and restaurant scene is taking off. A massive festival called Art Murmur draws thousands of people on the first Friday each month.

And yet retailers still largely struggle to survive in Oakland's downtown. "There aren't enough people here," Brian Kendall, project manager for the Oakland Redevelopment Agency, explains on a walk last month. Downtown is a major professional center featuring Kaiser Permanente's regional offices, the seats of city and county government, and music-streaming company Pandora. But for much of its history, it has been a commuter center, with few residential or shopping opportunities.