| Piedmont Avenue, Oakland, California |
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Piedmont Avenue is a Street in North Oakland, California . It is also the name of the Neighborhood which surrounds the street. Piedmont Avenue the street stretches diagonally from Broadway to Ramona Avenue, one block above Pleasant Valley (51st Street), and the Piedmont Avenue neighborhood is generally considered to reach laterally from Broadway to Oakland Avenue and the border to the City Of Piedmont , which is a separate, land-locked municipality within Oakland. A local neighborhood association, the Piedmont Avenue Neighborhood Improvement League (PANIL), is very active in protecting the neighborhood's charm and Livability . Piedmont Avenue Elementary School, located north of the business district, has grades Kindergarten through 5th. Attendance is roughly 350; average class size about 20. Average test scores are somewhat below average for American schools, but have been improving in recent years. The Catholic Church of Saint Leo the also operates a school on Piedmont Avenue. {Link without Title} There are several landmarks in the area. The center of the Piedmont Avenue commercial strip is a Julia Morgan -designed 1916 red brick building, the Fred C. Turner Stores, which is between 41st and 40th. At the north end of Piedmont Avenue and Pleasant Valley is the hillside Mountain View Cemetery , which was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and contains the Julia Morgan designed Chapel of the Chimes. Kaiser Permanente 's flagship hospital is located on the south end of the street. Piedmont Avenue was once the terminus of the Key System 's C line. The station building at 41st Street is still there, but a parking lot now occupies the land where the tracks were. AC Transit 's 12, 57, 59, and C lines now serve the neighborhood. One of the hidden jewels of the neigborhood is Glen Echo Creek, located 1/2 a block south of the avenue. Many local residents are not aware of the park's existence, due to it's quirky location and small size. BUSINESS DISTRICT Piedmont Avenue's namesake commercial strip boasts numerous locally-owned small business, including shops, bars and restaurants, the locally famous Fenton's ice cream parlor, an art house/independent movie theater, comic book store and more. Piedmont Avenue is a haven for caffeine. Gaylord's Cafe Espresso (formerly known as Uncle Gaylord's), Peet's Coffee have both been in the neighborhood since the 1980s. Starbucks arrived more recently, directly across from Gaylord's. L'Amyx Tea Bar serves several varieties of Tea and desserts. The Piedmont Theater a small movie theater that typically shows avante garde movies. The seating configurations can be odd and the screens smallish, but the theater is fairly popular. The theater is owned by Landmark Theaters . Fenton's Creamery {Link without Title} is perhaps ''the'' neighborhood fixture. Fenton's serves ice cream and Sundaes made on the premises, as well as traditional lunch fare such as sandwiches, burgers and salads. Fenton's has been in the Piedmont Avenue area since 1894, and in its current location since 1961. Favorites include the "Black and Tan" and the enormous "Banana Special". Fenton's ice cream is particularly well known for its serving size rather than its quality. In the 1990s Fenton's management laid off the complete staff and replaced them with non-union workers, resulting in an ugly strike. The nearby ''Ice Creamery'' on Lakeshore Avenue absorbed some of the disgruntled patrons, but Ice Creamery has since closed. In the early 2000s a fire started by employees during a burglary attempt shuttered Fenton's for over a year. Some have suggested the current owner was involved in the fire for monetary reasons. The gleaming Fenton's that emerged from the ashes included numerous upgrades to a building that had been showing its age. EXTERNAL LINKS
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