Uptown Development Project, Oakland, CA

While some people worry that downtown Oakland can’t sustain two theaters for live music, Tagami pointed out that the population of the East Bay eclipses that of San Francisco, which has half a dozen venues. Fox backers and city officials instead believe that the theaters together will help create a lively entertainment district that will draw restaurants and other nightspots.

“The Fox Theater will create a synergy that the Paramount cannot do on its own. The Paramount brings in 3,000 people, and 15 minutes (after a show), there’s not one person on the street,” said Chew, of the redevelopment agency. To increase the area’s attractiveness, the city is investing $7 million in lighting, pedestrian and other streetscape improvements along Telegraph, he said.

Already, the neighborhood is changing, though eclectic remains a charitable description. High-end home accessories story Entrez! recently opened a block from the Fox, but it shares the area with a pawn broker, a wig store and vacant storefronts – some of them former medical marijuana clubs – scarred by graffiti or protected by roll-down metal gates.

Still, a number of bars and clubs have opened in recent years, and other businesses are sprucing up their storefronts. A long vacant corner of the Art Deco Floral Depot soon will open as restaurant Flora, operated by the team behind the well-known Don?a Tomas in Temescal.

Perhaps most significantly, Forest City is expected to open The Uptown adjacent to the Fox next spring. A development of 665 apartments, with neighborhood retail and a public park, it covers four city blocks.

Warren Malnick moved his women’s clothing store, J. Malnick, from Fruitvale to Broadway and 19th Street in 2004, banking on the neighborhood’s upswing. “In three and a half years, you would be fairly shocked at the changes. There’s no way this is going backwards,” he said. “All I need here is increased foot traffic, and I can’t believe the restoration of the theater, the opening of Flora and the build-out of all those residential units won’t help every single merchant here.”

City Council President De La Fuente sees the Fox as a “key element to bring Oakland back to life… Absolutely, it will be an incredible renaissance and a message to the outside world that Oakland is getting back on track,” he said.

“I think it’s going to have a huge impact on downtown,” echoed Chew. “In the past, it’s like a neutron bomb goes off at 5 o’clock. I think the Fox will change that.”

“We need people on the street,” he said. On nights when both the Fox and the Paramount have shows “and you get 6,000 people on the street at 9 o’clock at night, you’re going to do a lot to revitalize the area.”

It may even hearken back to the day, 80 years ago, when the Fox brought 20,000 people downtown.