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5 <br /> <br />1950s served to emphasize a divide between the more established parts of the city and these <br />industrially-dominated flatlands areas to the west (Fig. 5). <br /> <br />The Past Equation: For San Leandro, these annexations were linked to industry, taxation and revenue <br />issues. In the postwar period, national corporations such as Chevrolet, Chrysler, Dodge, and General <br />Foods opened West Coast branch plants in San Leandro and its immediate surroundings. In 1947 the <br />City Council agreed to provide full municipal services to Chrysler Motor Parts, though its plant was <br />located outside the city limits and paid no taxes. Within two years, taxpayer opposition overturned the <br />political leadership that had made this deal. The new Council lost no time in annexing the Chrysler plant <br />site and its surrounding area into the city. But in the following two decades property taxes were kept <br />low to continue to attract and retain industry and investment in the city and tax rates were decreased as <br />well, almost annually. Even with low rates, industrial expansion led to industry funding over a third of <br />the cost of city government by the early 1960's 5. San Leandro’s fiscal and community-building success <br />led to the Wall Street Journal’s praise of the city as a “model municipality” in a 1966 profile6, while it <br />turned a blind eye to the racial exclusion of the period. <br /> <br />The Prosperity Machine: During these golden decades, San Leandro’s industrial districts were its engine <br />of prosperity. At its peak, over 20,000 people worked in San Leandro’s manufacturing sector 7. During <br />this time, the city had “both a white-collar, foreman/managerial, and small business middle class…as <br />well as a working class of skilled tradespeople, clerical workers, and factory employees and their <br />families8…” living in neighborhoods throughout the city and making their living from working in and <br />supplying the industrial economy. The industrial districts were centers of 20th Century manufacturing. <br />Hundreds of firms of all sizes took root here and the vast majority made things (Figs. 3 & 4). Railroads <br />had shaped much of the district (Fig. 2), as the original development pattern of large factory blocks and <br />few streets prioritized rail access and then truck access later as the freeway network grew – a machine- <br />driven layout (Fig. 13). <br /> <br />Economic Shift: By the mid-1970’s, San Leandro’s era of expansion slowed. Vacant lands filled up and <br />American manufacturing began its shift to lower-cost areas elsewhere in the country and abroad. The <br />generation-long “de-industrialization” and the loss of many of the district's large manufacturing <br />companies that followed traumatized San Leandro as much as it did large Eastern and Midwestern <br />manufacturing cities. As with other nearby communities, the city’s economy became more regionally <br />oriented. But through that period, San Leandro did not grown a large office employment segment – it <br />had neither developed a large Central Business District (CBD) of office buildings in downtown, nor the <br />large suburban office parks of newer, more outlying suburbs like Walnut Creek. The first and only <br />significant “Class A” office development in the city, Creekside Plaza, opened near the San Leandro BART <br /> <br />5 Self, Robert O., American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland. Princeton: Princeton University <br />Press, 2003, pp. 96-111. <br />6 Phelps, Lew, “Model Municipality – San Leandro, Calif., Manages to Surmount Many of the Problems That Plague <br />Cities.” The Wall Street Journal. New York: Dow Jones & Co., Inc., March 4, 1966, p. 10. <br />7 Self, Robert O., op cit; figure based on 1960 manufacturing statistics cited therein, plus addi tional growth <br />estimated through the 1970's. <br />8 Self, Robert O., op cit, pp. 105-6