Hayward's redevelopment trying to take the 'sub' out of suburban - John King Tuesday, January 23, 2007

So this is what life in the Bay Area has come to -- downtown Hayward is being marketed as hip.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Hundreds of housing units have been built near the BART station and hundreds more are planned. Apartments are being turned into condominiums and being pitched as near the center of action.

But numbers don't add up to hipness, at least not yet. Downtown Hayward's partial revival shows the very real appeal of mass transit. It also shows that new development in a place doesn't necessarily bring boom times to what's already there.

"I've been here going on 12 years, I've watched the shift, and it hasn't affected us at all," says Renee Rettig, manager of the Book Shop on B Street, the downtown area's spine. "We've probably picked up two regular customers from all the new housing."

I met Rettig toward the end of a morning's exploration of a downtown that's eerily quiet for a city of 135,000 residents. There's City Hall next to a BART station, a handsome 1950s library and a 12-screen cinema soon to rise. There also are a dozen empty storefronts within three blocks of City Hall, and empty buildings that include a long-vacant but regal bank across from the bookstore.

But when you look beyond the obvious strain, you see welcoming signs of life.

Wags & Whiskers has free dog kibble outside its door; Main Street Bakery offers a sumptuous hamantasch -- think a cookie-size fruit turnover -- for 85 cents. The Book Shop's enticing and reasonably priced used books are joined by new volumes that include, at the counter as an impulse item, Noam Chomsky's "The Umbrella of U.S. Power."

So there's promise and there are problems. What I don't see, though, is the "revitalized downtown Hayward" that "strikes the perfect balance of active recreational choices with urban amenities." The one promised at www.liveinhayward.com.

That's the Web site for three apartment complexes being converted to condominiums -- including one, Midtown, that's a 15-minute walk east along B Street from BART. The pitch for that piece of real estate makes it sound as though you're parachuting into Greenwich Village: "sophisticated urban living ... stroll down the street and make a night out of it ... the city is yours."

"It's expensive to live in San Francisco, so a lot of people are jumping on Hayward as an alternative," says Sunny Wilson, a sales manager at Midtown. She concedes that "this area is in transition" but shrugs it off: "We're definitely selling downtown urban living."

They're not the first. Look no further than the blocks around the BART station, where more than 700 housing units have been built in the past decade. There are front porches along the street, condominiums up above, even lofts designed to look like row houses shipped here from the East Coast.

Much of the new stuff is generic Bay Area infill -- "neo-Mexiterranean" is the wonderful phrase tossed my way by a local architect years ago. And some of it is painful, such as the row houses where the half-inch-thin brick is pasted onto the outer walls alongside brick-red stucco.

No matter. Give people parking and a spacious kitchen as well as easy access to transit, and you've got a deal. One townhouse now on the market for $599,950 offers "prime downtown location." A $519,999 rival across the way winks "walk to downtown, shopping and BART."

Besides the housing, something else has popped up on downtown's western edge: a supermarket accompanied by such ubiquitous names as Starbucks and Jamba Juice.

In the abstract, voila! Downtown's infused with housing, fresh produce and Frappuccinos. Let the good times roll.

Except that as today's B Street testifies, the old and new don't necessarily meet. They're more like autonomous worlds that happen to be side by side. Young professionals may stock up on basics at Albertson's, but they don't saunter down B Street looking for action.

At the Book Shop, Rettig speculates that the typical resident living near BART is "someone who wants relatively affordable housing in the Bay Area and they work elsewhere ... when they get home they're tired. They go inside, eat dinner, do e-mail and watch TV, then go to bed."

Theoretically, this could change when Cinema Place opens this fall on the block east of the Book Shop, 12 screens accompanied by the sort of cafes and restaurants that go well with blockbusters. Downtown Hayward might finally have the spark that summons everything else to life. That fills in the blanks.

Or it could be another isolated pod of prosperity, inward looking and self-sufficient.

Or -- intriguing and ominous at once -- it could put downtown Hayward on the map. Turn it into southern Alameda County's place to be. Fill those nice old buildings with the same chic names you find in Walnut Creek or Corte Madera -- and push today's creative independents right out of town, the ones who offer exactly the sort of rooted style that communities say they want.

The balancing act in Hayward isn't unique; you see it throughout the Bay Area, throughout California, throughout the nation. Every community wants to be a draw. Every community wants to be distinct. The challenge is to be both things at once.