Kevin Best and Misty Rasche remember when they had waiting lists for a Friday reservation at their bistro in the historic Old Oakland business district.

That was in 2007, before the recession hit and a series of angry protests that would come to define downtown Oakland.

Most recently, business at their B Restaurant & Bar has been harmed further since Occupy Oakland tents went up at City Hall on Oct. 10. Best and Rasche worry that the collateral damage from the protest may be the final blow for their restaurant.

“If we go two more months like this,” Best said, “it’s a wrap.”

Their restaurant is five blocks from the encampment. Businesses closer have suffered more, and not only from a loss of customers. Windows have been broken, street fires have been set, and graffiti has become part of the landscape, block after block.

Best and Rasche, West Oakland residents, don’t want to leave.

But as downtown business owners, they have been on a never-ending roller-coaster ride through the recession and the impact of high city unemployment rates, a series of high-profile protests and the disruptive demonstrations, and now Occupy Oakland, with its two tear-gassed melees in a little more than a week.

Despite it all, what may hurt most is the damage to the area’s image.

Unfulfilled promise

For a downtown that held such promise just a decade ago, it’s been painful journey.

“We own this restaurant because we love Oakland,” Rasche said. “You want to believe in it so bad.”

Since January 2009, the city has had three protests over the fatal police shooting of a BART passenger and one about cuts to higher education. The latest protest has been going for 27 days, including Wednesday’s general strike, which turned violent in the late-night hours.

The damage done by a small element of Occupy Oakland could have long-lasting effects on a downtown already struggling to overcome a bad reputation for business.

“Many, many Oakland residents … feel that this is disrupting every effort this city has made to have economic development,” said Councilwoman Pat Kernighan. “This has set us back 15 years.”

In the week before Wednesday’s general strike, three businesses pulled out of downtown lease negotiations, including one with 100 employees and another needing 35,000 square feet of space, said Joe Haraburda, president and CEO of Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.

At the same time, the tents and civil unrest have pushed some restaurant receipts down 50 to 60 percent, he said.

Mayor Jean Quan, who grew up around her family’s restaurant in Livermore, said such businesses run on a 5 percent profit margin and have a hard time absorbing even one lost day.

She said she knows of two restaurants downtown that are closing because of recent losses.

In addition, workers have lost wages as stores have closed for safety reasons or to show support for the marches.

Some companies that might have considered Oakland’s downtown, with its lower rents and convenient access to transportation, are looking elsewhere.

“People are afraid to come downtown,” said retail consultant Helen Bulwik, president of New Market Solutions. “How do you sell it at this point? What you cannot sell is safety and security.”

Vacant storefronts line Broadway, the main downtown artery, despite a comparatively healthy 15 percent commercial vacancy rate inside the tall office buildings.

The Men’s Wearhouse and Whole Foods, both damaged during last week’s strike, moved into the neighborhood in recent years, but Oakland remains an urban city without a significant retail presence downtown, Bulwik said.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

In the late 1990s, revitalization efforts that tried to bring back the downtown area included refurbishing the Fox Theatre and bringing 10,000 new residents into the neighborhood.

A vision shelved

Restaurants, retailers and business would follow, reasoned then-Mayor Jerry Brown, who spearheaded the drive.

In 2005, the city promoted the revitalization efforts, noting new restaurants, residents and $7.3 million in updated streetscape.

“New sidewalks, street tree plantings, pedestrian amenities, historic lighting, street furniture and sidewalk widening will encourage downtown patrons to stroll and explore our vibrant downtown,” a Meet Downtown Oakland fact sheet said.

On paper, it looked like the city was on the cusp of a major renaissance, with Gap, Starbucks and other national retail chains buying into the plan.

Gap’s 2001 opening at the corner of 14th Street and Broadway offered a major vote of confidence in downtown Oakland, Brown said at the time.

Five years later, Gap was gone.

About the same time, the recession hit the new downtown residential projects hard, leaving some condominium developments more than a third empty, while others were pulled off the market entirely to wait out the economy.

With Brown’s “if you build it they will come” concept on hold, there is no strong retail base, especially downtown, to attract Oakland shoppers, who spend $3 billion outside the city every year, Bulwik said.

What Oakland needs is a boom of retail along upper Broadway – some 3 million square feet of space – which could bring the lost business back into the local economy, Bulwik said. That could be the game changer Oakland needs, she said. But that’s for another day.

To be sure, bright spots exist in other parts of Oakland, with the Temescal and Rockridge districts thriving.

In 2011, an estimated 1,200 jobs were added to the downtown and Lake Merritt communities, said Marco Li Mandri, consultant to the Downtown Oakland and Lake Merritt/Uptown District associations.

“Oakland has got this steady march forward,” he said, adding that it’s outsiders who are bringing it down.

“They believe the venue for demonstrations against the state in general is 14th and Broadway,” he said.

Choice of target questioned

Indeed, with only one Fortune 500 company and about a 16 percent unemployment rate, many residents wonder why their city is the target of an Occupy movement directed at the economic elite.

Why aren’t the protesters in San Ramon, where Chevron just announced a near-record profit of $7.83 billion, asked Bill Jackman, an independent statistician and programmer.

“Why pick on the city that’s down?” he said.

Oakland resident Jerry Bloodsaw called it a failure of leadership to stand tall against the tent encampment and the outsiders who make the city look bad.

“Oakland still is a good city,” the finance worker said during his lunch break downtown Thursday. “That fear factor, we need to get rid of it.”

Mayor Jean Quan told residents and others gathered at a raucous City Council meeting this week that the Occupy Oakland encampment at City Hall is damaging the city.

Hundreds of jobs are being lost, police are being diverted from violent parts of town, some businesses are closing, and others are choosing not to locate in downtown Oakland at all, she said at Thursday’s special City Council meeting.

Yet at the same meeting, three of Quan’s staunchest supporters urged the council to support the Occupy Oakland encampment. One of them, Don Link, told The Chronicle that they spoke at the meeting on behalf of a group that emerged from Quan’s mayoral campaign and is led by Quan’s husband, Floyd Huen.

Quan’s actions during the past two weeks have left both supporters and opponents of the Occupy Oakland camp bewildered and frustrated.

Her mixed messages, whether she delivers them herself or through others, indicate that she is unwilling to make a decision, Councilman Ignacio De La Fuente said.

“Honestly, I think her nature cannot allow her to make a decision. The city is really suffering the consequences of that,” said De La Fuente, who has emerged as the mayor’s most vocal critic on the council since she took office.

After first supporting the camp, forcing it to close and then allowing it to spring back up, Quan now appears to be leaning toward wanting the camp evicted again.

Residents, police angry

Quan has been criticized for flip-flopping on Occupy by business owners, residents and the Oakland police union, which issued an open letter to residents Tuesday saying police were confused and did not know how to respond to protesters because of the mayor’s mixed signals.

At Thursday’s council meeting, Khalid Shakur, 43, who has camped since the first day, said to Quan, “Mayor Quan, I hold you personally responsible” for the poor relationship that has developed between the city and the camp.

The criticism comes from the other side as well.

Oakland resident Phillip Johnson, who wants the camp removed, said, “Somebody has to stand up for this city. Ms. Quan, you’re a good person, but the business community doesn’t like this.”

Meanwhile, Quan has continued trying to work with the campers in Frank Ogawa Plaza outside City Hall, but many are ignoring her and her administration’s requests for cooperation.

The city’s inability to get protesters to cooperate was apparent again Friday when campers who gathered for a morning meeting were met by Arturo Sanchez, assistant to the city administrator. Sanchez reiterated the city’s concerns over a propane tank in the camp’s food tent and the larger structures that have arisen, such as the medic tent, which is staffed by nurses twice a week.

Sanchez told the group that at some point, “those structures will have to come down,” but did not specify when. Sanchez’s warning was not well received.

“As much as you say you respect our position, please respect ours,” said a camper named Dennis, 39, who had just moved from the Occupy Santa Cruz encampment. “No structure will come down without a general assembly vote.”

Fire inspectors who walked through the kitchen Friday afternoon again asked campers to remove the propane tank, which was covered in a black garbage bag.

‘This is going to end up bad’

De La Fuente expressed grave concerns about what he said is Quan’s inability to take a stand.

“This is going to end up bad,” he warned. “If something happens and that encampment blows up because they have propane tanks, everybody is going to say, ‘Wow.’ Then it’s going to be too late.”

Illustration by Jamie Morton.

Nov. 15-17 the UC Board of Regents will hold a meeting to discuss the financial future of the UC system. The Occupy Education event will be held on Nov. 16 at UCSF Mission Bay, the same location as the regents’ meeting.

Protests at regents’ meetings have become common-place. Over the years, as multiple fee increases have been approved, it has become difficult for UC students to feel heard and not despair that they are members of a dying system. Just last year, the regents voted on an 8 percent increase in student fees, and this coming meeting will likely see even higher fees.

But this time around, we are presented with an opportunity. We are presented with the support of Occupy entities of local Bay Area colleges, Occupy Education and the Occupy movement as a whole. And their numbers are large.

We are presented with the opportunity to turn out in droves and bring the kind of state and national media coverage this issue deserves. With increased media coverage comes increased attention from California state voters who, at the end of the day, have massive amounts of control over the UC budget based on what legislators they vote for.

We should look to UC Berkeley, where protesters plan to hold a two-day event on Nov. 9–10. The protest will raise awareness of potential fee hikes, which will be determined during the regents’ November meeting.

According to the Occupy Education website: “We call on all the 99 percent, on all the Occupy general assemblies and camps throughout Northern California, on all student, labor, and community organizations, to come together in a massive display of non-violent civil disobedience to prevent the UC regents meeting from taking place, to send the strongest message that we will not accept any fee hikes, cuts, or concessions in any level of public education.”

By virtue of being UC students, we are 100 percent part of the 99 percent, and we should be mobilizing 100 percent for the change we need to take place.

Third and fourth-year students who sigh under their breath, “Thank god I’m getting out” and look the other way, this applies to you. You may be getting out of the UC system, but you are only getting into the poor job market.

First-year students, do not be defeated into thinking this is the way it must be — just because you don’t know anything else does not mean you cannot demand better.

We need to be our own advocates. We need to show up and speak up, and this is a grand opportunity.

So carpool, public transit, Zipcar — San Francisco isn’t that far away. On Nov. 16, meet up at 7 a.m. at the UCSF Mission Bay campus, 1675 Owens St., San Francisco, Calif. and Occupy the future of the UC.