I used to bike from SF to Berkeley when our office was there and I would always start my East Bay leg of the trip from the West Oakland Bart station. It really is a huge shame that that area is such a dump. It's so incredibly conveniently located and there is plenty of land and I expect rent to be very cheap relatively speaking. I imagine that it would be a great place to do hardware startups, especially around American Steel, where a lot of people into art welding work out of.

Having just placed a startup in SoMa, I'll say that the inconvenient CalTrain <-> BART transition is an issue. If you are looking to draw employees, mentors or investors from the peninsula, that one BART station makes a big difference. I expect this will change significantly once the new SoMa transportation hub opens and you have CalTrain lines that dead-end at a BART station.

Yeah, the W. Oakland to South Bay connection is hard, both via SF and 880.

However, it's about as hard as it is for the SF Downtown <-> South Bay connection, since to get to Downtown from CalTrain, you have to pass by a BART station :-)

Not from SF here, but I study maps of it frequently for analysis work. Is there really not a single startup there??? I find this a bit hard to believe considering its proximity to downtown.

It's my new home. There's really a lack of commercial development for a number of reasons but I've never felt unsafe.

I think cheap property and close proximity to the most active East Bay Bart are some really big advantages.

A few coffee shops, grocers and startups and I think the area could rapidly transform.

It's unfortunately been a poor neighborhood for a long long time. The university is too far for students to take advantage of low cost of living, and without young people providing both custom and cheap labor, it is difficult to grow the cultural infrastructure. It'll change eventually, and maybe Kato will be able to trigger a renaissance there... It's a ridiculously convenient location (1 bart stop away from downtown SF).

I don't know of a single one.

There's lots of art stuff happening, but no tech/internet (which isn't that surprising).

AFAIK the American Steel warehouse there is the center of a lot of the big metal art stuff in the Bay Area.