In ten years Forbes Street, from Bouquet Street to Craft Avenue, will be solidly lined with business houses. Fifth Avenue, however, seems to have lost nothing by Forbes Street's business expansion, and the people on that thoroughfare are confident that the growth of the two streets will be correspondingly rapid. Hundreds of people drive into the city every week to buy goods of one kind or another for they do not care to use the street cars unless they can help it. The only avenue for driving in town is now being ruined. Grant Boulevard has been given over to trolley magnates, so there is not a single street for carriages from Oakland to the business end of the city.
Nobody wants to drive a fine team and equipage over streets congested with traffic.
The result will be that these people will come to Oakland to purchase. In the future department stores will loom up and emporiums of all kinds multiply. The movement has but just begun. When I built the Iroquois apartments and set aside room for a block of stores people said I was a fit subject for a lunatic asylum. But none of those stores has been empty since they were first rented.