A cafe, bar, bookstore and record shop: If a neighborhood is home to these businesses, one can be assured that the area has the makings of a vibrant community.

What if all of these places were under one roof?

That’s the idea behind North Light, a new spot opening Thursday, Jan. 17, in Oakland’s already thriving Temescal district.

“We wanted to create a space where the creative community felt like they had a home base,” said Dan Stone, who co-owns the Telegraph Avenue establishment with Lee Smith, the concert promoter who runs Prescient Entertainment. “People who want to go somewhere and read or write, or argue about whatever — kind of like what Caffe Trieste was like way back in the day, but the modern version of that.”

North Light takes its name from the indirect light favored by visual artists. The business is also in North Oakland and, yes, Northern California.

Stone lives 50 yards from the bookstore bar. Last year, when he saw that the small space was on the market (it had been Marc 49, a wine bar), the 43-year-old onetime bartender jumped at the chance to open a business there — a sort of physical embodiment of Radio Silence, the literature- and music-theme magazine that he founded in 2012, now defunct because of financial difficulties. “What we had always tried to do with that magazine was find connections between artists and highlight that and create intimacy with the reader,” Stone said.

For the book and vinyl record elements of North Light, rather than choose the titles for sale, as happens in most small shops, Stone and Smith are showcasing works recommended by their favorite writers, musicians and artists. They’re opening the store with books curated by 16 people, each of whom has picked roughly 20 titles.

The list is impressive and speaks to the owners’ connections and the wealth of talent in the Bay Area. Stone, who years ago made radio documentaries about books for the National Endowment for the Arts, got recommendations from, among others, fiction writers Michael Ondaatje and George Saunders. The latter titled his blurbs “Books to Turn a Dark Time Bright Again”; they include Ibram X. Kendi’s “Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America,” Maggie Nelson’s “The Argonauts” and Michiko Kakutani’s “The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump.”

The list submitted by musician Patti Smith features Latin American fiction (César Aira’s “An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter” and Roberto Bolaño’s “2666”) and classics (Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” and Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick”). Some of the regional authors participating are Michael Chabon, Greil Marcus, Samin Nosrat and Rebecca Solnit. Also taking part is Daniel Handler, a friend of Stone’s who co-founded the Silent Reading Party with him in 2016.

“I think the most exciting things in life happen when people get together, have a drink, and talk things over, preferably in sharp and elegant surroundings,” Handler wrote in an email from India, where he is attending the Chennai Book Fair. “I look forward to North Light becoming that kind of necessary hub.”

Serendipity, Stone said, “was exactly what we had in mind when we were creating this. This is not a store you walk into saying, ‘I have to find “The Great Gatsby”; I have a paper due.’ You walk in and say, ‘Oh, my god, Patti Smith picked her 20 favorite books — what are they?’

“And you’re going to find things in there you’ve never even heard of. So that idea of discovery is really what we were aiming for.”

The total number of titles available at North Light will be small — roughly 300 to 350 — but they’ll rotate every couple of months. Stone says more recommendations are coming soon from Kay Ryan, Tommy Orange and Wendy MacNaughton.

One wall of the bar’s narrow, 700-square-foot front room is devoted to 18 bookshelves that reach the ceiling. Stone said he’ll add a rolling library ladder that will make books more accessible. A stylish banquette and small tables seat about 25 patrons. A deck out back — past a small kitchen that serves breakfast, lunch and dinner — accommodates roughly 25 more people.

Below the books are nine drawers of vinyl records for sale, curated by Pat Spurgeon, the drummer for the Oakland rock band Rogue Wave. (A drum kit owned by Spurgeon also sits in an alcove above North Light’s entrance.)

“Each drawer essentially serves as a different genre,” Stone said. “The face of each of these drawers will be an album. One of them will be Aretha Franklin, so it’ll be three degrees of Aretha Franklin inside that drawer — people she was influenced by, people she influenced, people she played with.”

A turntable will play at all hours at the bar, which is graced by turquoise tiles and faces a piece of digital artwork by Jim Campbell, whose LED installation tops Salesforce Tower.

“We’ll have day records and night records, and the day records will be jazz and classical — things you can actually work to — and then between 3 and 5, the vibe will shift more toward rowdier music,” Stone said.

What music is played at what times was important to Stone because, he explained, “If you want to go somewhere and work or read, you’re listening to rock ‘n’ roll or pop music during the day, which I can’t write or read to. So I’m wearing headphones everywhere I go.”

Also essential to Stone: North Light will be open 7 a.m. to midnight, every day except Monday.

“Everything in this neighborhood closes at noon,” he said. “Living in the neighborhood, I felt like there were a lot of things that I wish this neighborhood had and that I wish Oakland had, and we designed North Light with that in mind.”

Stone has two children, ages 2 and 4, and he thought of them, too, when creating a space that will be kid-friendly.

“I want my kids growing up in here,” he said. “I’d love for them to get home from school, take the bus home, get off on Telegraph and just walk into North Light.”

By the sound of it, all the cool kids will want to be there — regardless of their age.

North Light: 3-10 p.m. Thursday-Sunday, Jan. 17-20. Beginning Tuesday, Jan. 22, regular hours will be 7 a.m.-midnight, every day except Monday. 4915 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. northlight.bar