A new sports hub is pulling in fans from across the Bay Area. Attended by Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee, Plank at Jack London Square recently opened a watch bar and lounge called The Hub, doubling down on Oakland as a place to do business.
“We’ve been here 10 years, and we have a lot of experience working within Oakland,” says the company’s managing partner, Ron Lam, who adds that they’re confident they’ve built the right kind of expansion. “We’re hearing from our guests that there’s really no place to congregate inside, so we expanded and people can come out for happy hour and watch sports.”
With about 50 televisions, an 18-lane bowling alley, arcade, bocce and a beer garden, Plank is an anchor at Jack London Square, where there’s been a perennial problem filling empty storefronts. They occupy 50,000 square feet of space, and their new watch bar and lounge includes a 30-foot wall of state-of-the-art televisions and elevated pub food like towering smash burgers and “mountainous” stacks of barbecued ribs.
Around town: A new ownership group has purchased the former Element 7 cannabis dispensary in Montclair and turned it into a colorful new one called Flavors Oakland. The shop has installed three in-store ATM machines for its all-cash sales and also offers online ordering. This is said to be the Premier Group’s 14th licensed cannabis dispensary in California.
Movie night: Red Oak Realty and the Montclair Village Association are hosting one more outdoor movie night this summer — at 7 p.m. Sept. 13. The family-friendly movie “The Wild Robot” will start at sunset in Red Oak Realty’s parking lot at Medau Place and Moraga Avenue. There’ll be boxed dinners for purchase from Oh G Burger, free Ghirardelli chocolates and a book drive to support the Little Lions School in Nairobi, Kenya.
Looking back: The founder of the Hills Newspapers, Chip Brown, was back in town recently and reminiscing about living in Oakland’s Rockridge district and how he and his wife cobbled together the money to buy the Montclarion in the 1970s from founder Fred Graser.
“We were one of three contenders for The Montclarion,” he said. “We had no money, so we quickly put together a financial arrangement that was comfortable for Fred and his family.” They were “shocked and surprised” when they were chosen.
Realizing the enormous consumer buying power in the Oakland hills and wider East Bay, the Browns later started the Berkeley Voice and El Cerrito Journal, bought the already-existing Alameda Journal and acquired the Piedmonter from bankruptcy court. “All of these newspapers allowed advertisers to publish in all or parts of markets of their choosing,” Brown said.
Playing to their strengths, Mary Brown ran the newspapers and Chip traveled up and down the state looking for other media acquisitions. They ended up with 23 publications, focusing on local news whenever possible and with the Montclarion publishing — at one point — three days a week.
“We took very seriously our community responsibility,” he said.
Ginny Prior can be reached at ginnyprior@hotmail.com and followed on X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Facebook and at ginnyprior.com.