Emeryville
In the last decade, working class, industrial Emeryville has burst onto the scene as the hot place to build a concept mall, hotel complex or dot-com office. The Emery Bay Public Market, with its highly successful international food court, Border's Books & Music and art-deco inspired decaplex theater, helped kick off the city's renaissance—along with a nearby "big box" shopping center, where Home Depot and OfficeMax ring up high volume sales and create traffic problems. Adding to the fun along the I-80 corridor is Emeryville's gargantuan IKEA store. While Emeryville's residential demographics are still predominantly low-income, dot-commers and other young professionals are moving into the new condominiums and neo-Bauhaus lofts sprouting up near the design studios, new media enterprises and software companies that hug the I-80 highway. Emeryville's go-go business climate, in stark contrast to development-phobic Berkeley next door, has attracted not only IKEA, but also Sybase, PeopleSoft and a number of other expanding hi-tech businesses looking for new headquarters.