(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 427: Caretakers of the Public Realm
This week we’re joined by Andrew Jones, Program director for the Uptown and Downtown Oakland Community Benefits District. We chat about urban place management, how urban spaces are taken care of, and what it takes to keep them vibrant and engaging.
Today’s podcast was produced in partnership with Mpact.
To listen to this week’s episode, visit Streetsblog USA or the hosting archive.
Below is a full unedited AI generated transcript of the episode.
Jeff Wood (1m 27s):
Well, Andrew Jones, welcome to the podcast.
Andrew Jones (1m 43s):
Thank you so much for having me, Jeff.
Jeff Wood (1m 44s):
Thanks for being here. Before we get started, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Andrew Jones (1m 48s):
Let’s see, native to Oakland, California. I’ve been in the urban place management industry for the past 15 years. I am currently the program director for the Uptown and downtown Oakland, C B D, and I’m a bit of an entrepreneur, and I’ve got a few different projects here in Oakland that all kind of seem to all directions point back to urban place management and activating urban spaces and hiring and running staffing deployments throughout downtown Oakland.
Jeff Wood (2m 18s):
What’s your background? How do you get into Urban Place Management? Is that something that you stumbled upon or is it something that you’ve dreamed about since you were a
Andrew Jones (2m 25s):
Little kid? Ever since I was a we boy. No, it’s an interesting thing. I mean, I think it’s like most folks that are in this industry, you know, I don’t think very many people go to school to become an urban place manager. I think you fall into it. I think it’s a skill set. I would say that a lot of the folks like me who grew up in the theater seem to end up here in some strange way. I think that there’s something about managing space, having a love for spaces and venues and management of space. It all kind of leads back to a set of skills that probably, you know, stage managers have all those skills too. And that’s how I got my start in all my entrepreneurial endeavors as 14 years old, I, I started working with a really amazing theater company here and throughout high school, that’s all I did was produce theater with them and a bunch of other groups.
Andrew Jones (3m 15s):
And then I get out of school and I just go straight into owning my own business, lighting, staging, sound, running venues for my buddies who are all musicians. And then, you know, downtowns are like really big venues, you know, they need to be clean, they need to be safe, need to be programmed and marketed and branded and cared for and receive people and make sure that they’re treated with dignity and love. And so it’s, it’s just been like bigger and bigger venues, if you will. So that’s where it’s landed me.
Jeff Wood (3m 47s):
I love that connection. I really do love that connection, the theater and in cities as a theater. And it’s something that in the urban planning space, I know that on our show we’ve talked about before is Wal Disney and how he planned cities and his thoughts about cities. And you know, basically Disneyland and I, I did a show on this a number of years ago, but Disneyland, he planned it to be one big television set, right? So if you move your dial, you go to Tomorrowland, and if you move your dial again, you go on the jungle cruise if you move your dial again. So it’s kind of a space that he’s set up the way of a television or a theater. And so I find that connection you’re making interesting as well.
Andrew Jones (4m 21s):
I love that. I’ve, I’ve never heard that, although we used Disneyland as an example from the way that they train their staff, how they treat folks coming in and coming out. I mean, you know, there’s a layout, there’s a field, there’s landscaping, there’s entertainment. I mean, it’s like this interesting bubble that I’m not a huge fan of going to Disneyland myself, but when you’re there, you’re seeing it and you’re like, okay, I’m taking some notes. You
Jeff Wood (4m 46s):
Know? Exactly. Well, what are, what’s your personal experience? I mean, you grew up in Oakland. What’s your personal experience with urban places and even mobility in those urban places as well? How do you get to work in the morning? And also, what’s your experience with the urban, you know, venue you work in?
Andrew Jones (5m 3s):
I think when I, when I consider these, I consider it from a few different points, right? So I’ve, I’ve owned a business in downtown Oakland since I was 19. And when we’re trying to get people to come, and it, in my case, it was owning like a live music venue. So it’s trying to get people here. It’s trying to convince them that coming to downtown Oakland is a good decision, right? That there’s a benefit to this for them and, and in coming to downtown Oakland that they’re gonna experience something that’s meaningful. And so wearing that hat, I have had a love-hate relationship with my dear city. And I think that there’s always room to progress and to evolve in terms of like how people come off of freeways, and this is in personal vehicles, how they’re, you know, experiencing the street when they’re trying to get to a destination.
Andrew Jones (5m 51s):
Of course that applies to public transit. And that I think further down my comment will be more about my, my staff’s experience and some of the things that we go through there. But just to say that, you know, that that first and last experience of a city, it’s so important. You know, if you’re coming off of a freeway and you have just this abysmal relationship with that last mile between your venue and getting off the freeway and you can’t find parking, or you come back and your car is b and it’s the last thing you’re thinking about after, you know, just had this great experience, it’s really troubling. And so there’s a lot of those, those small quality of life things that we think about all the time that just have such significant impact on the overall experience for people in urban spaces and, and really every downtown in America right now.
Andrew Jones (6m 40s):
And then, you know, as you, you fast forward and you think like, what about the people who work here? What about their experiences when they’re coming earlier, they’re leaving late, you know, all of our nighttime economy folks, like what’s their experience, right? Because these days these are employees, typically wage workers. And these days the environment for hiring wage staff is very challenging. And you’re constantly thinking about ways you can be an innovative employer and create meaningful employment options for folks. And you know, the last thing you want is for them to get bit, or for them to get a ticket on their car. And so we can go into some of our ideas and things that we’re working on to, to make that experience better on any one of these levels. But I’m just trying to give you a sense that the way I think about transit and that experience getting to and from, it’s definitely multifaceted, but it is extremely important.
Andrew Jones (7m 30s):
We didn’t even talk about really residential and their experience and why they choose to have these, you know, higher priced apartments closer to transit. Well, you’re paying a lot of money to live in an apartment and then you come downstairs and that experience between your apartments, you know, luxury lobby and transit is terrible. That’s your front door, your, your living room, and it has an impact on your mind state. So it’s a big topic.
Jeff Wood (7m 55s):
Oh, it is. It is. It feels like a huge topic. And I guess that that leads into my next kind of overarching big question, which is, and you addressed this a little bit, but what exactly is urban place management? I mean, you know, there’s place management, there’s activations such as murals, landscaping, greening, street furniture, installation, all those things. But what exactly is it that brings all these things together under one umbrella?
Andrew Jones (8m 16s):
Well, I mean, the industry has been doing a great deal of work to set a standard, if you will. And I think I can do a plug here for the International Downtown Association, our trade group, if you go to downtown.org, there’s an amazing about Us page that really dives into like, what is urban place management, by definition and kind of the seven domains that we focus on. But I think that in summary, you know, we are caretakers of the public realm. That’s the way I like to think about it. And our dear friend Carrie Morrison kind of coined this term specifically how we ought to treat people that are living, living in the streets or on our streets, generally.
Andrew Jones (8m 58s):
This idea of radical hospitality, this idea, this notion that downtown should be this welcoming, bustling place where people, you know, have connection and energy and shared experience and art and cultural and rich fabrics, all these things that represent cities kind of come together in a unique way in downtowns. So when, when we’re talking about it, we’re caretakers of the public realm. We wanna make sure that things, you know, feel safe, they are safe, that they feel clean, that they are clean, that the things that make this city of Oakland. And we get to work elsewhere too, from Berkeley to San Francisco and all sorts of districts that they, that they’re authentically representing the rich culture of their cities and then also playing really amazing hosts to international art that may be coming in.
Andrew Jones (9m 47s):
And different forms of our different people from different walks of life can come and express themselves as well. So in that way, we present the best of what our city has to offer, and we usher it into place and we hope that the people that are coming to experience that have an experience that feels like they’ve been cared for.
Jeff Wood (10m 5s):
So it’s managed differently though, in different places. I imagine there’s different ways that these kind of organizations of downtowns or business districts are set up. Is there a difference between maybe one way of doing things in another, like a, a business improvement district versus a community benefits district?
Andrew Jones (10m 21s):
Sure. So I think that there, there are several mechanisms that generate the funding that go to pay people like me, right? So there’s, in general, there’s gotta be a group of people, whether it be property owners or merchants that have agreed to assess themselves a special tax. And that tax is collected. It can be through sales tax that everyone agrees a percentage of their sales tax goes to this fund. Or it can be agreed that based on the size of your property, you’ll pay more or less. And that fund is collected through your property taxes and managed typically by a 5 0 1 or .
Andrew Jones (11m 1s):
And, and so the nonprofit is created to manage those funds of money. And so the property owners have an organization to look to, you’ve taken my money and you are to spend it in agreed upon fashion. And very roughly that goes to cleaning safety and marketing initiatives and all those things can be pretty broadly crafted, but cleaning, you know, straight up litter abatement, graffiti abatement, illegal dumping abatement, we, we do all the things in between the code brown, the code yellow code, green pressure washing, et cetera. And then you’ve got beautification initiatives, you’ve got greening initiatives, hanging plant baskets, mediums, ground planters.
Andrew Jones (11m 41s):
So every, there’s a lot of things that fall into kind of like the clean and safe. And then marketing is, you know, telling the story of your downtown. So events, just marketing platforms, like really just kind of continuing to boost and showcase restaurants and restaurant weeks and putting together all sorts of different, you know, media that would get people to say, huh, yeah, I want to come to downtown Oakland or downtown Spokane. So those are kind of the three primary categories that people fund these initiatives to achieve greater levels of service that are all kind of above and beyond what the city can afford to a, to, you know, give to that given neighborhood. And typically they’re very, there’s a contiguous area.
Andrew Jones (12m 22s):
It’s like you don’t go one foot outside of your, you know, the property owner on this side of the street pays this one on the other side doesn’t, you don’t cross the street to go and clean in front of their building. So it’s a very defined boundary that is typically a part of your zone or your district.
Jeff Wood (12m 40s):
I’m also curious, I mean, you’ve been in Oakland for quite a while doing this work. Obviously you, you grew up in Oakland and everything like that, but how has it changed since you started working there? On this specific project I worked in, in Oakland from 2005 to 2014 at 14th and Broadway, at the old historic central building. And over that time, I noticed many different changes, many things happened. Obviously the Occupy movement was going on, there was protests, there was all kinds of stuff happening. But also there was a renaissance too. There was a lot of restaurant openings and, and coffee shops and things like that that were really cool. I’m wondering how you kind of experienced the change in downtown Oakland over that time period as well.
Andrew Jones (13m 18s):
Yeah, that’s a great question. And, and that’s an interesting timeframe to be in downtown Oakland. And the central building is in our district. And you may have seen ambassadors and, and me walking around there at some point, we get a lot of attention to 14th and Broadway. I mean, the change has been really kind of incredible. I mean, we’ve gone from less than 800 residents in our district when we first started this thing in 2009, well, residential units. And then now we’re somewhere in the neighborhood of 12,000. I mean, it’s pretty incredible just the, the amount of cranes that were in the air. I mean, from 2009 to 2013, we used to, we used to say we’ve got crane envy, cuz San Francisco had all the cranes in the air that all of a sudden, you know, the capital, the market would recognized Oakland as a viable place to build.
Andrew Jones (14m 13s):
And they started really hammering on downtown Oakland, buying a lot of vacant parking lots and building their buildings. So it’s true that just on an architectural level, the streetscape is totally different. There are swaths of my district that are just so radically different visually. It’s, it’s really incredible how quickly buildings can be built and people can be in them. And all of a sudden it’s like, well, where did that ratty, you know, set of parking lots go and now they’re these, you know, buildings, you know, residential towers, good bad design or other, just they’re there. So, I mean, for me it’s been, it has been a trip. It feels like I have achieved certain things and I feel good about that. And of course, you know, with change comes controversy and rightfully so in some ways that we can go down the, you know, we can take the conversation to displacement or the cost of living in Oakland and all the really true issues that face every urban environment that is seeing this kind of change.
Andrew Jones (15m 7s):
But in general, you know, my feeling is that downtowns need people living in them. So as an urbanist, as someone who’s like a real, you know, is a huge proponent both environmentally based on transportation and access to services and work and all the things that make downtowns like a living, breathing thing that I’m an advocate for, that change comes with controversy. Those things do happen. And so, you know, our goal has always been to kind of be the group that kind of tries to heal and allows folks that may not be able to live here, though not many people were really living in downtown Oakland, but certainly to make sure that those that live in Oakland more broadly continue to have a place that they can call home in downtown.
Andrew Jones (15m 50s):
So I think, you know, my experience has been, on the one hand, it’s a dichotomy. I’m super impressed by one of the things we’ve been able to do. But downtown Oakland is a troubled little city. I mean, it’s a tough town. And so it always seems to be one step forward, two steps back, we start getting some momentum and then there’s some like horrific tragedy in the world. And it’s felt acutely here in Oakland. You know, we’re a bunch of radicalists, we wanna see justice and we’re gonna go and put up a fight, and that’s the way it goes. And so all the social movements that come through downtown Oakland amazing. But it highlights this really fractured world we’re living in. And that’s hard sometimes. So I think overall I’m very impressed by some of the things we have going, and in some ways we’ve got a long way to go.
Jeff Wood (16m 33s):
That kinda leads into my next question, which is, you know, with the pandemic and everything, how are we kind of experiencing our urban places now? There was a huge amount of growth going into 20 19, 20 20, and then that kind of got halted because of all of the changes and Yeah. And how people worked and how people went to places and whether you could go to places or not. I mean, downtown Oakland is, is a place that seemed to me that, you know, it was really good to have a first Friday and have everybody clustered together. Yeah. But something that might not have been doable for a couple of years.
Andrew Jones (17m 3s):
Yeah. I mean, and that, that story’s still being written in some ways. You know, we’re, we’re optimist. I mean, I think to be in this business, you know, you have to really love what you do. And we, all of my team, all of our ambassadors, all of our administrative folks, everyone day in day, day out that works on this program, you know, which is the better part of 40 people Daily, are all really passionate people. And we we’re constantly fighting to make it so that, you know, kind of regardless of if you come back to work today, you don’t come back to work whatev whenever you are here that the experience is exceptional and the best it can possibly be. So that service delivery has never wavered for us.
Andrew Jones (17m 44s):
We didn’t take a day off. Well, okay, we took 30 days off for the ambassadors while we sorted out like safety protocols. But like once we got things in play, we were right back at it and caretaking our downtown. I know for us, we think of downtown as kind of as an ecosystem, right? It’s a moving, breathing, evolving area and it needs tending to caretaking. And so part of that, you know, and just to focus on one aspect for a second of that question is, is to say like, what is our retailer experience downtown? Right? A lot of this ground floor experience is really where we end up spending a lot of our time, right? A vibrant downtown is gonna have a vibrant and bustling retail environment. In a lot of ways it’s kind of a bellwether for how things are going.
Andrew Jones (18m 27s):
If you walk up and down the block and everything is boarded up and feeling shady, well guess what it is, you know? But if all the boards are down and people are thriving and selling things and merchants are having a good experience and you know, then that’s what the experience is. I mean, that perception is the reality in this case. And so we spend a lot of time trying to support the retailers that are here. That’s number one, constantly trying to tell their story, constantly trying to push out to the world that they exist, that there’s someone here to support that. These small businesses are absolutely critical to the ecosystem of the downtown, but also Oakland. And then also try to come up with initiatives that, you know, bring more innovative retail to the market. And so I spent the first half of my day-to-day as an example, all I’m doing is thinking about the initiatives, the grants, the people we could talk to, the retail locations that are open and, and provide an opportunity to maybe do a pop-up to permanent style initiative that brings more energy to these areas.
Andrew Jones (19m 24s):
So all day long we’re kind of thinking about how do we increase, you know, foot traffic and through foot traffic you create interactions, interactions, remove anonymity. And then once you do that, you’re building community. And now people know each other and they’re, they’re experiencing the area in a different way. And so your question was kind of like, where are we at now? I think it’s evolving and we’re just taking it one step at a time, right? I mean, I can go into a specifics about how we’re doing it, but it’s, it’s to say that we’re aim small is small, right? So we’re just taking one day at a time. We’re really trying to focus on a day and make sure that we’ve activated it, that we’re working with the city, that we’re working with our merchants.
Andrew Jones (20m 4s):
And so as an example, we’re launching Oakland Works Wednesdays. That’s gonna be an initiative where we put a lot of energy around our activations just into Wednesdays. And so tenants, employees, they know, Hey, let me go to work on Wednesdays. Okay, there’s all these activations, all these fun things to do. Cool. And then hopefully that comes Thursdays and then it becomes Fridays, you know, and we just add ’em
Jeff Wood (20m 27s):
Over time. I like it.
Andrew Jones (20m 29s):
And that’s it, Adam, over time and make us, so you don’t wanna work from home. That’s the, that’s the key.
Jeff Wood (20m 34s):
So who does this work with you? Who are the folks that are the ambassadors? Who are the folks that work with you at making sure that everything’s in tip top shape?
Andrew Jones (20m 42s):
Yeah, the team is diverse. So the foundation of everything we do is the ambassador teams, right? They are truly both the face of the program, the foundation, everything we do is basically rooted in this particular district in the work that we do environmentally. It’s not always like that. There’s some cities that don’t need as much like Tender love and care physically, they just get a lot more activations or they have a stronger kind of, you know, administration, economic development, style of operation. But in Oakland and the East Bay, with the problems that we face regionally, really 70% of our budget goes to the clean and safe services, which again includes some beautification and greening and other things.
Andrew Jones (21m 28s):
But really it’s the 30 individuals that are our ambassadors. And what you can expect to see is, is an individual, you know, across the board that all of them are caretakers of the public realm. All of them are members of the urban place management industry. And daily you can see them out there pushing carts, pressure washing, abating graffiti, giving directions, helping elders cross the street, helping elders that may have, you know, parked their car and can’t remember where it is. Check in with our businesses, right? Solving issues. You know, hey, you know, someone’s going around, I don’t know, giving fake $20 bills. Well let’s put out an alert, let’s make sure other people know. So it doesn’t happen to the next guy.
Andrew Jones (22m 9s):
You know, someone might be in crisis in a shop and they just need a little support. It’s not a PD thing. We don’t want to involve the police in these kind of quality of life crimes. They can only lead to incidents potentially. And so the ambassadors are that force multiplier, they’re out there to kind of help address these issues in a very strategic, very compassionate way. And so we’re, you know, we like to say we’re problem solvers all day long. And so we, you will see a diverse array, a lot of male, a lot of female, mostly on our side. It’s like, I would say 98% people of color working on our team, which is an interesting stat.
Andrew Jones (22m 50s):
And we were definitely working within the industry to continue to try to create opportunities for development of these roles to get to the executive level, to continue to diversify the urban place management industry, which we could talk about through some of our D e I work and that’s going on. But yeah, I think that in the end, they are the kind of core of our team. And then you’ve got the administration side to side that I sit on with my team. And these are folks that are, you know, experts in the fields of events and activations, running large staffing deployments, you know, some multimillion dollar staffing deployment. You’ve got trucks, you’ve got vehicles, you’ve got equipment, you’ve got diesel, you know, litter vacuums, you’ve got all the things, you’ve got forklifts, you’ve got all the tools of the trade that go into running the district.
Andrew Jones (23m 34s):
So we’re all kind of all hands on deck. Everybody from the executive level, the executive director, he could be, you know, doing an event helping out with that, or he is uptown and, and he’s meeting with stakeholders trying to address issues of the day. And so on our team, on the downtown Oakland side of the thing, every one of us gets dirty and, and puts in the work. So I would say, I don’t know if it’s like that in every district around here, but we have found that that’s how we like to roll.
Jeff Wood (24m 3s):
Are there folks that are drawn to these positions specifically? And also, how do you approach hiring for this work, which is very public facing, right? Yeah. It’s something where you have to interact with people generally.
Andrew Jones (24m 14s):
Absolutely. I think maybe, maybe we take a moment and just talk about what I referenced before and, and, and really hiring with our values. There has been in the world, right? I mean, not just in this industry though. I think it’s like many industries you could look at that typically folks at the top of the pyramid, this kind of traditional hierarchal pyramid that runs corporations and nonprofits. It’s been really a primarily Caucasian male run industry. And you know, here I am, Caucasian male, I’m the second in charge really, of the organization. And so, you know, if 2020 taught us nothing, I mean, we have been working on this work for quite some time.
Andrew Jones (24m 57s):
Being in Oakland, you just have to, and Steve Snyder, our executive director is, you know, is dedicated his entire life basically to creating opportunities for workforce development. And so this, this has actually been a part of our core fabric forever. And we have been constantly hiring and bringing in and elevating and actually moving on staff to other projects and programs so that they can have higher levels of income. So we’ve kind of created a model that, you know, ultimately when I explain everything that we do, are you a landscaper? Are you a community liaison? Do you use technology through video surveillance to solve crimes? Are you fixing things and you know, moving heavy equipment, are you installing trash cans?
Andrew Jones (25m 40s):
Are you activating plazas, booking talent? Or you know, there is just this suite of services that we provide and the ideal candidate is someone that’s not afraid of any of that. We need people who can think imaginatively and get work done. And so that’s almost exclusively our hiring criteria, right? I believe that everyone’s capable of doing this work. And so these days with the hiring environment that we’re in, in the Bay Area, very low unemployment and just this insane cost of living, our organization for years has been moving the needle towards higher and higher paid staff. And right now the needle is moving to the direction where we’re gonna be very close, if not the highest paid ambassador program in the nation.
Andrew Jones (26m 27s):
And so that’s a credit to our board of directors that gets it. That’s a testament to our staff. But we are dedicated to the idea that every member that works full-time for us should be able to come to our downtown and enjoy and bring out their, their loved ones, you know, enjoy the fruits of their labor. And for a long time, it has not been that. I mean, I can come up with numerous examples where ambassadors, this, this key feature of every district, they’re just treated like garbage. You know, it’s just like they’re not paid well. They, they have to work three or four jobs, yet they are creating massive amounts of value for the property owners that they serve.
Andrew Jones (27m 9s):
And so our job as an organization has been to lead the charge to change that narrative. I mean, even the job titles we use is changing. So moving from this ambassador model, which it’s a great word, they are that, but they’re also managers of public space. They’re place managers, right? And so, you know, a title does mean something. Are we just cleaners? Are we caretakers? Right? And so it’s important that as we start to evolve these roles over time, that the language changes that are wage changes, the benefits change, so that you can grow old in this industry is the key.
Andrew Jones (27m 49s):
And provide the upward mobility, the options to continue to elevate within the organization to take on more and more. And so that’s been a huge part of our work recently. You know, and by recently, I mean over the last, you know, 10 years, I mean, our first five years doing this, it became clear to us that there was a problem, right? We didn’t know anything. We were just kind of young and, you know, kind of just got dropped into this thing out of our events background. And then we realized like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like we, we gotta, we gotta edge this thing to a more perfect solution cuz this ain’t gonna work and we don’t want to be a part of it if we can’t keep evolving it the way we wanna evolve it. Peter, put our names on it.
Jeff Wood (28m 28s):
What’d you learn in those first five years? What was it that stuck out to you the most in terms of how it was working and how it wasn’t working?
Andrew Jones (28m 36s):
The first few years? I mean, you know, we are going through a time where, you know, Oscar grant was murdered, occupy Wall Street took shape. I mean, there’s been so much trauma in this country and it all just was like right there for us. It was on Stark display in Oakland. I mean, we had one of the encampments, not every downtown had that, but we had all of that happening right in our living room. And so, so we are like deeply connected to the problems that people were facing. We’re, we’re hearing every day, we’re seeing the protests we’re a part of them, we’re helping to facilitate them safely, we’re, you know, helping to clean up after them.
Andrew Jones (29m 19s):
We’re, we’re deeply involved in this whole process. And, you know, I would just say that, you know, in the end, the work that we do, it’s inherently risky. I mean, there is just an unusual amount of risk that goes into managing urban spaces. I mean, you can, you don’t have to use your imagination very, very well to understand that. Like, if I go and there’s someone who has been selling drugs on a corner, and I’m going to reimagine that corner and put in a public plaza and start activating it, I am disrupting someone’s business, right? And so when that person comes to my office pissed off in my face for disrupting his business, it can be a little gnarly, right?
Andrew Jones (30m 6s):
Like you’re realizing that the work we do, just the, to have the presence of mind to be there, to start trying to shift this thing. Not everybody’s on board. It’s not gonna go over well with everyone. So you have to be ready for that conflict. And every day that conflict is present in these downtowns. There’s more guns in this country than people. You say the wrong thing, you look the wrong way, it can happen. And so we’ve been through a lot of seriously traumatic incidents in this downtown. Again, a total testament to my team that’s working within the, the district boundaries as these ambassadors is that they will get guns pulled on them that just happened within the last month. You know, you will get your life threatened, you will see people on BART that you maybe just had an interaction with where you asked them to stop doing something, you know, and they got pissed off and they saw you in uniform.
Andrew Jones (30m 55s):
And so they maybe were like a little hesitant, but then you’re on Bart on in your civilian clothes and you’re like, oh yeah, remember me, you work in Oakland, you live in Oakland, you’re making this change. And so all of that risk, what’s the reward? That’s the thing that we focused on. It’s like, how do we continue to have the best team in the nation work in the craziest downtown and not treat them the best? And that’s what we have been moving towards. So that, that realization came along, you know, first few years we’re like, whoa. So this industry is not, you know, urban design. This is, this is tactical urbanism, this is stuff where you really are out there every day on the grind, moving physically in the space.
Andrew Jones (31m 37s):
And it opens you up for a lot of different interactions, both good and bad. So that, that dawned on us clearly in the first five years, and we’ve just been trying to kind of make sure that we treat people the right way since
Jeff Wood (31m 49s):
Yeah. Take care of your employees
Andrew Jones (31m 51s):
For sure.
Jeff Wood (31m 52s):
You mentioned Bart, what are you all doing with them recently? There’s some work that you all have been doing with Bart to focus on 19th Street?
Andrew Jones (31m 58s):
Well, yeah. So we have a dimension of what we do called District Works. It’s a company, you can check it out. It’s a staffing company that specializes in deployments for staffing within the urban place management industry, right? So, you know, Bart came to us and said, Hey, we’re opening up some restrooms and we wanna make sure that the customer experience is exceptional when people are coming and going and using these restrooms. Now, anyone who’s been in a public transportations restroom, there, there can be varying degrees of, of experience, let’s say. I mean, good and bad. And to Bart’s credit, they realize that human beings being present provide an opportunity for greater levels of customer service and greater levels of, you know, exceptional experience.
Andrew Jones (32m 46s):
So if I have someone standing at the restroom greeting someone, just very simple, it’s a, it’s a human psyche thing. I’m less likely to go in there and mess it up. There’s someone just right there. I know him. Hey Joe, I’m less inclined just to leave it a mess. So when they decided to open up these four restrooms, initially, some restrooms that were closed post nine 11, they’ve been closed for 21 years, I guess at that time, 20 years, 21 years. They were like, Hey, let’s do it this way. And so we were lucky enough to get to, to get to work with Bart on this initiative. It’s been amazing. We’re, I don’t know, a quarter million of interactions that we’ve had greeting people as they come to the restrooms, we’re there to make sure that, hey, if something does happen, if it, if it gets dirty, we close it so that, you know, someone coming doesn’t have that experience.
Andrew Jones (33m 36s):
We work with Bart directly, you know, engage with their staff and make sure that their staff knows when it’s dirty and they can come clean it. We open it back up and we’re there 21 hours a day, seven days a week. I think it’s done, it’s done amazing things for the stations that are open, 19th Street being included. It’s just, it’s just an amazing amenity like you’ve just seen. It’s just so bottom line. So on the one hand, I’m very proud of art on the other, for 15 years I’ve been screaming at them to open a restroom. So it’s been nice.
Jeff Wood (34m 4s):
And you mentioned the first and last mile connections of people coming into the district. I mean, you gave an example of driving in, but then also, you know, getting off at 19th Street where there’s the blue brick and 12th street where there’s the red brick. How does that, you know, kind of experience evolve into what’s going on upstairs, which is the downtown district?
Andrew Jones (34m 23s):
Yeah, well we’ve been working on that relationship for, for as long as I’ve been doing this. I mean, having the second largest transportation hub in the Bay area between, you know, 11th and 14th on Broadway is a very important feature. You know, the geographic epicenter of the Bay Area is Oakland. Like, you can’t get much more central than we are as a key feature. I have always felt that it has been mistreated, right? We’ve got such an opportunity to ensure that when people decide to come to our downtown and they want to use public transportation, which we are huge advocates for that when they come out of the BART station, I can control a certain level of that experience.
Andrew Jones (35m 8s):
But when they’re in bart, they’re like, Hey, I’ve gotta use the restroom. And they can’t. It’s a problem, right? If I’m up on a bus stop and I’m sitting there and I’m trying, I’m, hey, I’m being a good environmentalist or I can’t afford a car, but I want to come to work or whatever your reason is for using BART bus doesn’t matter to me. You deserve the dignity of a clean restroom experience, right? These are major, major transit organizations. They’re moving hundreds of thousands of people daily. It seems very common sense to me that they would put strategic restroom locations throughout their system so that people don’t feel like they have to urinate on a sidewalk. That they don’t have to go in and bother a mom and pop business who gets inundated with these requests all day if they are therefore subsidizing this amenity for these transit operators.
Andrew Jones (35m 59s):
It should be an absolute like federal law, as far as I’m concerned, that it, that it’s a mandatory requirement. You have restrooms for your users that are clean, that are well lit, that are well managed. It should just be an absolute to get federal funding of any sort. You should have to do that. It’s my 2 cents, but
Jeff Wood (36m 17s):
I like your 2 cents.
Andrew Jones (36m 19s):
So I mean, again, and it comes down to how people feel when they’re using these services. So for me, you know, as someone who cares about that a lot, it feels like for years it has just been completely missed. And so it’s nice to have at least one, like 12th Street doesn’t have a restroom at this moment. 19th Street does, lake Merritt does. So there’s still these gaps in service and they’re trying to backfill them. They’re opening two more. I think downtown Berkeley and Embarcadero will get their restrooms this year. I think they’re gonna open up one mission, et cetera. So they’re, they are continuing to evolve this. But I, I am a firm believer in, I think it was someone on the Impact tour that used the term human presence as infrastructure.
Andrew Jones (37m 5s):
It should be a part of your funding mechanism that you get to, you know, staff these things. Because really the reality is if you don’t, then the infrastructure gets abused and it’s never open. And just anecdotally, BART stations that don’t have attendance, they are often closed more often than they’re open because they’re in constant need of repair. So it, it costs you some, I think the number was like $30,000 a month to not staff a restroom and it’s closed something like 90% of the time, but it costs you $40,000 to staff a restroom and it’s open like 99.9% of the time.
Andrew Jones (37m 46s):
So you, you pick your poison, right? You’re either repairing it daily or you’re staffing it and creating this other level of experience. And so I think if people really started thinking like that and prioritizing that, and then allowing those that are the attendance to make a living that’s meaningful and connect the dot for them, that they’re a part of the ecosystem, that they’re actually in a meaningful industry that, you know, facilitates environmentalism, transportation, activation, all the things that we try to impress upon our staff, I think we’d be in a much better place as a planet, as a downtown and as an industry.
Jeff Wood (38m 22s):
Have you noticed a difference at 19th Street after that opened in terms of the flow or the amount of folks that are actually using the restroom or anything along those lines?
Andrew Jones (38m 31s):
Yeah, I would say that the data there is a little hard because there’s just so few people using Bart relative to pre pandemic levels as an example. It’s, it’s like just this night and day ridership issue. This particular restroom is within the paid area. So fewer writers in paid area only versus like above ground. Let’s think I’m a, I’m a fan of like the Portland Lou, you know, something like that. You know, if you had some above ground restrooms that were higher visibility for the users of the neighborhood, then I think you would see greater usage. So in that particular case, that station is probably the lowest amount of usage within the ones that we are doing attendant work.
Andrew Jones (39m 18s):
But if you go to like Powell Street as an example, much higher levels of usage. I mean, it’s a huge tourism stop. Lots of businesses still coming and going from there. You will see like thousands and thousands of users daily and you’re talking tens of thousands of users monthly. It’s, it’s nuts. So that’s the one where, you know, you’ve got big parades, you’ve got other huge festivals, people down there, there’s so many people using that restroom every day. So it does kind of matter where it is, right? To see like the actual user data kind of increase. But I would say anecdotally, all day long, our staff, it’s like, it’s like we just saved someone’s life when they come outta bar and they’re like, oh my God, you’re here.
Andrew Jones (40m 2s):
Right? We get that, we get those emails all the time where it’s like, if I was not able to use the restroom, I thought I was gonna go on myself. You know, like you just, it, it matters when they can run upstairs and they know it’s there. So though it might not be as frequent at 19th Street, every one of ’em seems meaningful.
Jeff Wood (40m 19s):
Is the kind of work that you all do ever done? I mean, obviously it’s a day by day process, but it feels like it’s something ongoing. Is there ever a an end goal or is it just kind of continuous, we want this to be in a certain state of being?
Andrew Jones (40m 36s):
We talk about that as a joke in the office to me. So we’re, we’re funded by a tax. So, you know, show of hands for everybody who loves additional taxation, you know what I mean? Like, no, nobody really wants us to exist. I mean, on the one hand, if you’re a property owner and you’re paying this tax, you’re like, nah, the city should be doing this is what we hear all the time. And then if I’m a fitting staffer, I’m like, well, they’re non-union and they’re doing our jobs. No, we’re not. And that’s why we exist. But that’s the rub. Nobody wants us.
Andrew Jones (41m 16s):
Everyone needs us, right? And so I want more than anything that I could evolve the budget to be less clean and safe oriented. I would love, let’s say I come into work on a Monday morning and I don’t have heating piles of like food containers and illegal dumping and graffiti all over my small businesses and, you know, just an insane assortment of issues that we have to go fix. And if we don’t, no one will. And it would look like trashed city. I would love nothing more than to come in one day and that just not be there. People are like, okay, there’s a trash can. I’m gonna put it in there. So that’s where like the cynic in me is, it’s like, okay, that’s, that’s never gonna, people just, for whatever reason, they just like trashing .
Andrew Jones (42m 5s):
So I would say, yeah, the work would evolve. I would love to see our time more spent on supportive services for those that are unhoused or suffering from mental illness or who are opening businesses. If I could spend my entire day really focused on supporting the businesses that are here, or getting new businesses up and running and filling retail, that would be my just absolute, you know, best job in the world scenario. So yeah, I, I think that it will be here for a long time to come until there’s like robots that do what we do. We’re doing this, but I would, as a human, I would like to work myself out of a job and this thing function on its own and people treat spaces and people properly and, you know, we’re everyone’s healthy and everyone’s enjoying their downtown and we don’t have to do much.
Andrew Jones (42m 54s):
That would be amazing.
Jeff Wood (42m 56s):
When you go on vacation, and I imagine you maybe if you go to other cities, do you take notes about what’s going on in their places? Do you take notes about the things they’re doing right or the things they’re doing wrong?
Andrew Jones (43m 9s):
Oh, my wife or here, she would say that I spend far more time than I should. Looking at trash cans and hanging plant baskets and, you know, landscaping and irrigation. She’s like, Hey, we’re, we’re in France. Why are you looking at that recycling bin? Yeah, so we, we are obsessed. In fact, there’s a, there’s a drinking game that every time we say activations, we gotta take a shot. I think I’ve said it like 17 times on this podcast. In fact, if you’re keeping note and you’re, you’re playing the game activations and then you have to do it. So yeah, we take this with us everywhere we go. I mean, in the end, I have the best job ever. I mean, I mean, I really, it’s, it’s like an insane field to be in because we get to support people.
Andrew Jones (43m 51s):
In the last week, our organization found housing for over seven people. We are planning out all sorts of meaningful marketing campaigns that’ll help our merchants, you know, meeting with stakeholders to solve problems, you know, some crime related, but some just infrastructure related. How do we get that light bulb on? I mean, just the list goes on and on and on for all the things that fill your bucket. You know, we, we hosted an event on the 24th of February that was just this insane expression of art and culture in a vacant retail storefront that like brought together like, you know, elders from the c communities, young folks from the community, everybody coming together to celebrate around the ideas and the, the spirit of art.
Andrew Jones (44m 35s):
During black history, monk participated in the Black Joy parade and, you know, held down the black cultural zones, skating rink and da da da. I mean, the list goes on and on and on for the impact culturally that we make. And it’s just an insane feeling. There are the negatives, the kind of, you know, hardcore nitty gritty of the thing. But in general, 95% of my day is spent thinking about like all the amazing things that makes Oakland Oakland and how to help people have that experience. Like, I’m so tuned in, I can find that when I want. I just have to make one call to be like, inspired as hell by the work someone’s doing that I know.
Andrew Jones (45m 16s):
But you know, often people don’t have that. They haven’t dedicated their life to finding it as not immediately accessible to them. So I want it to be accessible to them. I want them to know that we’re a resource and our office is always open. You need that little hit of pick me up, like, come holler at us. You know, like, what can we do? Where, where’s your passion? Let’s tap you into this nonprofit. They need help and get you fired up to be here. I mean, so that’s the work we do and that we love that we’re constantly thinking about.
Jeff Wood (45m 44s):
Do you have a favorite spot downtown Oakland? The favorite spot to hang out to relax. Maybe. Maybe you go to Latham Square or your, you’re in the building next door with Rotunda.
Andrew Jones (45m 54s):
Yeah. That’s, that’s amazing. Both of those spaces are ones that we focus a lot on right now, by the way. So The Rotunda is an amazing, amazing building. My first meeting of the day was in that building today, and I’m a huge fan of Franco Gallop Plaza. I think it’s just an amazingly beautiful pocket park and I just have such ambitions for its future and all the things we can do there. So I love bringing my family down when we’re doing events there and playing, you know, soccer or ping pong or whatever we’re doing down there, having a couple of drinks and hanging out underneath the city hall. The amazing building that is City Hall, the architecture of City Hall. But I mean, if I’m grabbing a coffee, I love Modern Coffee.
Andrew Jones (46m 37s):
If I’m grabbing a drink, you’ll probably get me at Van Clefs. You know, food-wise, the best deli sandwich in town is Aroma Deli. So I can go on and on and on. I mean, I’ve, I’ve basically received like 95% of all my caloric intake from like Aroma Deli since I was a young pup. So, but yeah, the place is evolving. There’s new things popping up all the time. There’s Silver Mesa like, ah, that place is good and beautiful. So I mean, yeah, if you’re looking for a good thing to do, you can go to Oakland Central to check that out. And all of our curated experiences happen through a marketing campaign if we call Oakland Central, which reflects a lot of what I just said.
Jeff Wood (47m 18s):
Awesome. I love Oakland. I really miss my time there with all my colleagues and everything. And I ended up working from home. Yeah. But in 2014, long before the pandemic. Well, so where can folks find more information about what you all do in downtown Oakland, in addition to the website you just gave us?
Andrew Jones (47m 36s):
Yeah, so, you know, downtown oakland.org is the website for the associations and a place to go to kind of learn more about the, the sausage making of the district, right? That’s like our board minutes. It’s an agendas and things that we’re up to on a technical level. But if you are interested in following us on social media, all of that is Oak Central. Hashtag Oak Central at Oak Central. And that’s for Oakland Central, which is our kind of outward facing lifestyle and destination marketing campaign. You know, the average person doesn’t really wanna learn about the district’s hours of operation or our board agendas. They want to go someplace where they can have a curated experience for how to come to downtown Oakland and have some drinks or go out or do whatever you’re gonna do.
Andrew Jones (48m 20s):
And so that’s really the Oakland Central campaign. All of our events, everything that we produce is all done under that banner. Every Maita October, we do a curated busker series. It’s called AMP Oakland. And in 2019, we did about 300 different performances up and down the street. These are free public experiences. You can just pull up, it can be, you know, salsa flamenco, it can be gospel, it can be any number of things. So we’re constantly booking and activating public spaces. That’s a great place to go and learn more about that. We’ve got the Red Bull International Dance Style Competition coming May 5th to Frankie Gallop Plaza. We got black coffee coming to Frankie Gallop Plaza on May 13th.
Andrew Jones (49m 3s):
That’s a crammy award-winning Afrobeats dj. So, you know, there’s, there’s all sorts of stuff going on all the time.
Jeff Wood (49m 10s):
Awesome. Well, Andrew, thanks for joining us. We really appreciate your time.
Andrew Jones (49m 13s):
Thank you. I really appreciate the conversation.
