Living Spaces Now Open!
At 9 AM, Thursday, June 9, the ribbon was cut and furniture retailer Living Spaces officially opened for business in the former Kmart location at 250 Floresta Boulevard. The arrival of the southern California-based Living Spaces in San Leandro has been highly anticipated, and marks only its second location in the San Francisco Bay area. The retailer opened its first Bay area location in Fremont in August of 2015 and plans to open its third in Millbrae in the near future.
Living Spaces offers quality furniture and modern home décor in a wide range of styles and prices. The showroom is expansive, attractive, and even incorporates a supervised play area for children so parents can shop at their own pace. Living Spaces is modeled on the home-assembly model made popular by IKEA, while marketing a more sophisticated aesthetic and higher quality product. Aside from select decor, the San Leandro location is exclusively a showroom, so shoppers may browse the floor and order furniture to be delivered to the showroom for pick-up, or for home delivery.
In addition to a new showroom, the $4 million investment in building improvements included a significant face lift to the exterior, as well as a new façade, landscaping enhancements and parking lot repairs, elevating the aesthetics of the entire area. Living Spaces has brought more than 100 new jobs to the city and offers furniture sales – a retail sector that until now was not meeting local demand for goods (as described in Part 3 of the Economic Development Update published earlier this year).
I’m in love with Living Spaces and I was so excited to have one located so near my house unfortunately… I drove there a month ahead of time and a week later I received a ticket from the video camera located on Floresta and Washington for turning right on red.
When I saw the ticket I couldn’t believe my eyes -I am a teacher, I am used to follow rules and regulations to the letter and I was sure I had made a stop before turning. This is my first traffic ticket ever and I proceeded to get educated on how to fight it… there must have been a mistake somewhere…
Yes, in fact, to my dismay I just found out that it was MY MISTAKE since it is not legal to make a right turn on a red arrow. In fact, this is a common misconception being born from the ability to turn to the right on a red light and often seeing clear signs when you are not able to do it in certain corners.
Adding to this misconception is a green arrow I must wait for everyday throughout my commute with a clear sign to not turn on red although on this particular traffic light there is not a red arrow.
In conclusion, after experiencing this, I feel that the purpose of this video camera system is not really to make sure that drivers like me follow regulations but, quite the opposite, to take advantage of this common mistake in order to generate revenue while no clear sign is posted hence, from now on, I plan to avoid bringing any business to San Leandro city until some efforts are made to educate the population and preventing them from committing something that, at present, looks like an official allowed scam.
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I have never in all my years in CA seen a red arrow? No turn on red means no turn on red, no matter what symbol it is. I am guessing that you crossed over the crosswalk line, triggering the flash/ticket. I see it there every single day. You have to stop before the crosswalk.
Thanks for your kind reply although, after going through various states of denial -and forcing myself to make a special trip to this now dreaded corner, I finally realized there is no red arrow and that I jumped into false conclusions upon not being able to watch the video so… my “Hollywood stop” didn’t qualify for any mitigation and now I must pay the same fine that anybody running a straight red light.