InBerkeley

It won’t officially launch until mid-August September 1, but The Hub—Berkeley’s new “habitat for innovators” in the David Brower Center—offered a taste Monday evening of the stimulating public events it plans to offer. A sold-out audience crowded into the center’s Richard and Rhoda Goldman Theater for “Money, Mobs, and Media,” a lively and candid discussion about mobilizing action for change. The panelists were the founders of three of the Bay Area’s most influential social-change organizations—Matt Flannery of Kiva, Steve Newcomb of Virgance, and Ben Rattray of Change.org—who shared stories about the challenges and rewards of blending entrepreneurship with activism.

“Tonight is the beginning of a seed sprouting,” said Alex Michel, managing director of Hub Bay Area, in his introduction. “People with ideas for change need a living, nourishing habitat, and we’re building that habitat upstairs.”

The Berkeley Hub, at 2150 Allston Way (less than a block from the Berkeley BART station), is the first U.S. location of a worldwide Hub network that was founded four years ago in London. (There are Hubs in 12 cities on four continents; a San Francisco Hub is in the works.) According to Hub “community builder” Meredith Walters, Hub Bay Area got its start when Tim Freundlich and Kevin Jones, co-founders of San Francisco investment firm Good Capital and creators of the Social Capital Markets conference, “realized that people in the Bay Area were itching for a place to come together to connect around social enterprise, social investing, and generally using business to create a better world.” They raised money and got permission from Hub World to launch at the Brower Center, itself a hub for environmental and socially conscious organizations. (The center’s other tenants include Earth Island Institute, Green Jobs Network, and the Redford Center.)

The Berkeley Hub will include individual petal-shaped tables, a communications station, a kitchen/café, a window workbar, and the “Hubble,” an enclosed meeting space for up to eight people whose frosted-glass walls can be written on. Hub memberships are available at various levels, from Hub5 (allowing five hours’ access per month) to founding member.

Hub Bay Area is also creating a network of mentors, sponsors, and people who can contribute professional skills to fledgling social enterprises. Find out more about joining or supporting The Hub; for information about attending or sponsoring an event, send an email to bayarea.hosts@the-hub.net or call 415-624-5881.

Business, Downtown Architecture, Business, Co-working, Downtown, Social Change

Another opening to report. The Dailey Method is opening a studio in Berkeley today in The Elmwood.

The Dailey Method, which promises to get you “longer, leaner, stronger and more fit”, is a group fitness regimen inspired by exercise guru Lotte Berk. This will be the company’s eleventh Bay Area location.

The studio is at 2631B Ashby Avenue, close to College,  in a building that has long been empty, so it will be good to see it occupied. For a while it looked like it would be leased to a large restaurant, but that idea was nixed by concerns over increased traffic and decreased parking opportunities. The Dailey Method website promises “an ample parking lot conveniently located behind the building”.

More information can be found here.

No news yet on the other vacant retail spaces in the same building.

Business, Retail, The Elmwood Business, Retail, The Elmwood

You’ve got to love BioFuel Oasis. First off, this women-run cooperative launched, in 2003, the only bio-diesel station in the East Bay (and possibly the whole Bay for all I know) out of a run-down warehouse in west Berkeley.

Now they have taken over a 1933 (traditional) gas station that had seen better days and, largely with their own sweat equity, transformed it into, well, a veritable oasis.

The place looks great — with planters under canopies and solar panels keeping the whole place powered up.

BioFuel Oasis is run by Novella Carpenter, Jennifer Radtke, Margaret Farrow, Ace Anderson and Melissa Hardy and it’s having its official grand opening celebration on Saturday July 18, noon to 5pm. There will be “grillin’ and chillin” with free food and non-alcoholic drinks, a live band and — wait for it — a fuel filter changing rodeo.

It’s free and all are welcome. Find details here.

Business, Events, Green, Green living, Retail Business, Green, Retail

How refreshing to be reporting on a retailer that is expanding rather than closing up shop.

According to Diablo Magazine, Elmwood Stationers will be opening a second store in Lafayette.  The store, which has being going strong since 1966 on College Avenue, will share space with custom jewelry shop Ware Designs, in a space near Trader Joe’s.

I patronize this store for its personal service rather than schlep down to Office Depot in Emeryville. And, I don’t know if it’s new, but their website’s pretty nice too.

Meanwhile, in case you missed the news, two art galleries recently opened in Berkeley: Hazel Wolf Gallery is in the new downtown David Brower Center; and Alphonse Berber Gallery is in a Julia-Morgan-designed building on Bancroft Way opposite the UC campus.

Arts, Business, Downtown, Retail Arts, Business, Downtown, Retail

Berkeley’s Downtown, the three-star restaurant on the corner of Shattuck and Addison, is closing for a while over the summer. According to Eater SF:

Downtown has decided to shutter for the months of July and August. We’re told that the restaurant is planning on coming back for the fall semester, but there’s a chance that, in the meantime, there will be a remodel… The specific shutter date is still up in the air, but the strongest possibility is that Downtown’s summer vacation will commence on the last weekend of June. Kindly adjust your schedules.

Downtown, opened in 2001 by alums of Chez Panisse and Bay Wolf, is a favorite haunt of theater and concert-goers — and they usually do a grand job getting their French-influenced dishes to you in time for curtains up.

[Photos: www.downtownrestaurant.com.]

Business, Downtown, Food Business, Downtown, Food, restaurants