The Oakland Business Improvement District is excited to announce the design team chosen for the Innovation Oakland project!  After a highly competitive consultant selection process that included proposals submitted by design and planning firms from around the world, ARUP,  together with Mijksenaar, Billings Jackson Design, !melk Landscape Architecture PC, EDGE Studio, Peter Margittai Architects and Wall-to-Wall Studios were selected for the project.

Innovation Oakland is a community-wide infrastructure initiative of the Oakland Business Improvement District that seeks to prepare our neighborhood to compete in the 21^st century digital age.  Cities around the world have enlivened public spaces and generated economic activity via art and technology based projects such as Melbourne’s Federation Square, Chicago’s Millennium Park, Zaragoza’s Digital Mile and Bristol’s Legible City. 

The ARUP team will work closely with OBID stakeholders to develop exciting, highly considered solutions which will bring similar benefits to Oakland and to the region.  ARUP is a global design and consulting firm working in over twenty five countries.  Recognized for their ground breaking and cutting edge projects, ARUP is the creative force behind many of the worlds most innovative and sustainable projects.  As the firm that will act as the lead consultant for the Innovation Oakland project, ARUP has brought a team of local and national experts that will bring creative and forward thinking applications in way finding/ signage, smart technology applications in information and transportation, digital art and smart parking to name a few. 

 The OBID wishes to thank the following partners for their financial support provided for 2011 and for 2012 towards the Innovation Oakland project: Carlow University, UPMC, the University of Pittsburgh, the Allegheny County Community Infrastructure and Tourism Fund and the Pittsburgh Partnership for Neighborhood Development.