Rob AriasA few news stories aggregated from around the web relevant to Emeryville residents in this month’s Emeryville Business digest.
Wargaming America has announced it will shutter its Emeryville Office which employs 100. The global online game developer cited our areas skyrocketing costs in its decision and will shift these jobs to Illinois and Texas.
A proposed hotel along Mandela Parkway next to Target has run into opposition by labor unions. At the request of the Oakland Planning Commission, the hotel’s developer held two community meetings to solicit public input.
Ripple Foods, who won an innovation award for its non-dairy alternative to “milk” using peas, has netted $65 Million in Venture Capital to help create alternatives to meat. Ripple and Memphis Meats in San Leandro have made The Bay Area the center of the emerging “alt-meat” industry.
Wargaming America slashes more than 100 Emeryville jobs
By George Avalos
Wargaming America, seeking to operate more efficiently — and escape skyrocketing costs in the Bay Area — has decided to jettison more than 100 jobs, close its Emeryville offices and shift its local operations to Illinois and Texas, a company executive said Friday.
“It’s mainly being driven by business logic,” Stan Watt, a director with Wargaming America, said Friday. “The high cost of living in the Bay Area is also a factor.”
Read more on MercuryNews.com →
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Amid union clashes, another hotel aims to set up shop in Oakland
By Katie Burke
The development team behind a 220-room West Oakland hotel proposal is urging the city to approve the project before the window on new hotel construction slams shut when this economic cycle ends.
First proposed in late 2016, Texas-based developer Ram Hotels has spent more than a year pushing the $40 million project — a figure that doesn’t include land costs, fees or other expenses — for the Caltrans-owned site near the Emeryville border. The project had been slated for a final vote at the Oakland Planning Commission meeting last week, but was pushed to Feb. 21 to give commissioners more time to host another community meeting and give a workers’ union the chance to push for higher wages. The project expected to generate at least $2.3 million in annual taxes for the city.
Read more on San Francisco Business Times →
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Meat processors among funders for Bay Area alt-meat industry
By Jonathan Kauffman
Two Bay Area companies producing high-tech alternatives to meat and dairy products have attracted significant new rounds of investment.
Ripple Foods, an Emeryville company that creates plant-based milks and yogurt, is receiving $65 million from a group of financiers, including Goldman Sachs and Menlo Park’s Khosla Ventures.
Read more on SFChronicle.com →
“It’s mainly being driven by business logic,” Stan Watt, a director with Wargaming America, said Friday. “The high cost of living in the Bay Area is also a factor. It’s everything: housing, taxes, labor costs. It’s the whole cost of living in the Bay Area.”
It seems such a waste of time
If that’s what it’s all about
Mama if that’s movin’ up
Then I’m movin’ out