Oakland’s Commonwealth pub expanding to E’ville

The offerings of the Emeryville Triangle neighborhood are about to grow substantially. In addition to the recently announced in-the-works Scarlet City Espresso Bar, Commonwealth Café & Public House will be opening a British style “Micro pub” at 3986 Adeline with optimistic plans to open in August (Sorry, too late for viewing the World Cup).

Recently announced at the June 2nd BPAC meeting, the popular Oakland Pub & Café will be expanding to the former Café Biere spot at Adeline and 40th (and Furenzu before that). Café Biere closed late last year and moved on to Albany to take over the former Montero’s space on San Pablo & Solano as “Bacon & Biere” … then promptly closed down after three months.

“The space wasn’t perfect, but it fit us. It’s a funky, unassuming space in a neighborhood that we think is underserved” mentioned Ahna Adair over a phone interview. Ahna co-owns and operates the Oakland space along with her husband Ross. “It fit the style we were looking to do”. Commonwealth’s KONO location (Koreatown-Northgate) helped bridge the gap between the Uptown and Temescal neighborhoods of Oakland and they’re looking to do the same with an area of E’ville that just can’t quite seem to get its footing.

The Commonwealth Micropub also presented plans for the city’s first “bike corral” that would convert a single vehicle parking spot into eight bike parking spaces. The Emeryville BPAC approved this at their June 2nd meeting and it will proceed to the Transportation Committee and ultimately to the city council for final approval. The very bike-friendly city of Portland has over 100 of these Bike Corrals and their success has paved the road for other cities to implement them including SF and Oakland.

On-Street Bicycle Parking or “Corrals” provide many benefits where bicycle-use is growing, including:

• Providing typically 8X as much customer parking.
• Improve the outdoor café seating environment by removing locked bicycles from the sidewalk..
• Increase the visibility of bicycling and advertise the business as being “Bike-Friendly”
• Prevent larger vehicles from obscuring the business

The pending use permit also allows for a “Sidewalk Café”. Commonwealth intends to create an outdoor patio fence and integrate the interior better with the exterior. The footprint of the space is small but the kitchen is actually a bit bigger than the existing location and will enable them to offer additions to their menu like Fish & Chips to compliment their existing favorites like Shepard’s Pie & Beanz & Toast. They are still evaluating whether the space can accommodate events like the weekly pub quiz that has been popular at their Oakland space.

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Further Reading:

Oakland businesses help CommonWealth pub rebound after fire | Oakland North →