Three more Oakland highrises planned

Scurry to set plans before Mayor Brown leaves town

San Francisco Business Times – March 3, 2006 by Ryan Tate

Heeding Mayor Jerry Brown’s call to exploit the final months of his pro-development tenure, developers have filed preliminary applications for three more Oakland highrise projects — two of them taller than any residential building now standing in the city.

The tide of applications signals that developers believe the city’s highrise housing boom has legs. While there are now at least 15 such projects in the development pipeline, only one is under construction, and there has been uncertainty over whether the others will ever get built. Construction costs have spiraled up sharply over the past two years and there are plenty of signs the residential real estate market is cooling nationally.

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The tallest proposed new downtown condominium tower would rise 372 feet at 250 12th St., at the edge of Chinatown. The building would hold 205 condominiums on 30 floors, according to preliminary plans submitted to the city. An architectural “wing” inflates the height of the building; the top roofline is at 319 feet. The developers are Golden Harvest Co. out of San Leandro and architect Yui Hay Lee.

Another tower, rising 19 stories, would also sit at the edge of Chinatown. Developer KH Associates is planning 356 residential units and a hefty 36,000 square feet of retail at what is now a surface parking lot at 226 13th St.

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Former San Francisco Planning Director Gerald Green is helping a development team that wants to put a 318 foot, 32-story condominium tower near the heart of the Lake Merritt district and just a few blocks from Forest City’s Uptown residential development. On 19th Street near Harrison Street, the development needs an environmental impact report because the existing building is an historic structure, according to city planning staff.

A few blocks up Broadway, near the Oakland Auto Center car dealership site, developer Ted Dang expects to soon enter into a contract with a national homebuilder for several hundred units of housing on what is now a parking lot. Dang had put the lot under contract to Olson Co., but said recently he does not expect that deal to close.

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Developers are bullish on residential towers

12 are in planning or under construction

San Francisco Business Times – November 18, 2005 by Ryan Tate

Housing developers have a barely controlled mania for building skyscrapers in Oakland, despite showing no interest in such projects as recently as last year.

At least a dozen highrise condominium and apartment projects are in the works, and they have spread far from Lake Merritt, where the towers have traditionally clustered. They are now poised to pop up all along Broadway, starting in the Auto Row area well north of downtown, then dotting the street and its flanks along 30 blocks, through the city center, to Broadway’s southern terminus. At the Jack London Square waterfront, a proposed highrise is set to rise 20 stories or more.

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