By Daisha Williams

Post Staff

Black Cultural Zone (BCZ) and Block Inc., co-opened a space called “Uptown Market: The Best of Oakland” on Thursday, Aug. 17. They have created a free-to-use retail space in order to give small business owners a more expansive market.

Block Inc. is a tech company that owns Uptown Station, a historic building in the heart of downtown Oakland. On the upper floors is office space, and the first floor is home to their Community Hub in addition to Uptown Market.

Located at 1955 Broadway, Block opened Uptown Station in 2020, with the intention of using this space to support entrepreneurs. They’ve been partnering with BCZ since the pandemic, and together, with the creation of this space, they have done just that.

The market is open from Wednesday to Friday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Every market day there will be multiple stations to shop at as well as a food station. The vendors are rotated every 30 days, so each time someone visits there may be new products to purchase.

The vendors, who were chosen through an application process earlier in the year, all went through a training workshop, with the goal that at the end of their experience with them they will have gained all the skills necessary to open and manage their own storefront.

COVID-19 caused many small businesses to close — especially BIPOC businesses. BCZ and Block are attempting to remedy this, using Uptown Market as a way to help these businesses get back on their feet and continue to thrive.

“We hope that by the end of the program they will have the knowledge and experience that they can take to scale their business into a brick-and-mortar space — not just Downtown, but in other opportunities of Oakland that Black Cultural Zone is also investing in,” said Jazmine Kelly.

BCZ has been putting on events like these to help strengthen the Black community by circulating the Black dollar since 2014. During the pandemic, they created and regulated Akoma Market to help businesses stay afloat. Since then, they’ve hosted markets at Liberation Park in 7101 Foothill Blvd. in East Oakland.

Carolyn Johnson, CEO of BCZ, talked about why they made the shift from these outdoor markets to Uptown Station:

“A great step for those vendors that are still with us is to give them the opportunity to be in a retail space, to get a sense of what a brick-and-mortar feels like: what it means to deal with your inventory, to get the support you need, the systems you need, and to engage one-on-one with a different group of people that come to downtown Oakland as opposed to East Oakland.”

This market was created with hopes that they would be able to create something more stable and beneficial long-term for businesses, and Uptown Market is the realization of that dream.

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