I think I would like to convince the Berkeley, CA city council to make some zoning changes to attract YC-style start-ups. Maybe Berkeley could even aspire to be the location of a YC start-up school.<p>I need some help establishing whether there is realistic demand that would move into town if these zoning changes were made.<p>Downtown Berkeley has many vacant retail fronts, as do other retail corridors in Berkeley. These stores are hard to rent because they are "deep". They are narrow but go back from the storefront very far. They are like this because, back in the day, you'd store inventory in the back and have a storefront up front. Few need such spaces anymore, so the retail space is too expensive for retail.<p>I am proposing that tenants should be allowed a dual use: offices (such as hackerspaces suitable for a start-up) in the back -- and subleasing to artists, artisans, and other cultural uses up-front -- with no or limited partitioning between the two spaces. (Think, 3.5-walled start-ups opened up to cultural spaces on the main street of a vibrant university town.)<p>Is there demand for such start-up space in Berkeley? How can I be sure? How can I persuade council, if indeed there is such demand?
I don't think re-zoning will create demand for startup space. The last startup I worked for was located in the basement of a famous berkeley hotel along with a handful of other startups. There wasn't a high demand for that space. What matters is if a startup culture exists. Berkeley's startup culture is small compared to SF, Palo Alto, or the South Bay.
Office space and retail space share the same zoning in most cities (at least Berkeley did, while I lived there), so the problem is likely the landlords.