23-story office tower planned for City Center
Site is one block from high-rise Shorenstein finished in 2002
By Kelly Rayburn, STAFF WRITER
Article Last Updated: 09/26/2007 07:25:22 AM PDT
OAKLAND — Oakland City Center is moving up.
Developers' plans to build a 23-story, 500,000-square-foot office tower will be given to city staff today, as Shorenstein Properties, working with MetLife Real Estate Investments, hopes to capitalize on what it sees as another ripe development opportunity downtown.
The tower is planned for an undeveloped patch of land bounded by 11th, 12th and Jefferson streets and Martin Luther King Jr. Way.
Shorenstein, which owns City Center, has had plans for the site for years.
Executives with both companies joined Mayor Ron Dellums in saying plans to build the office tower reflected a healthy economy in the city for such projects.
"I think this is a tremendous statement of optimism on behalf of the business community with respect to the future of Oakland," Dellums said.
A more tangible impact — the building's effect on Oakland's skyline — won't go unnoticed, either.
As financial markets swayed, the company originally planned to build office space, before switching its plans to condos and then back to office space when the housing sector tanked.
"It's been in active planning of some sort for probably two-and-a-half, three years," said Shorenstein President Glenn Shannon.
The tower would rank among the city's tallest buildings.
Only six buildings in Oakland are more than 23 stories, according to Emporis, an independent research group that catalogues high-rise construction.
Those buildings are the 28-story Ordway Building on Valdez Street, the 28-story Kaiser Center on Lakeside Drive, the 27-story Lake Merritt Plaza on Harrison Street, the 24-story tower at 1111 Broadway, the 25-story Kaiser Engineering Building on Harrison Street and the
24-story Clorox Building on Broadway.
By comparison, 555 City Center Tower, oneblock east of the proposed building's site and completed by Shorenstein in 2002, is 20 stories.
Ground breaking for the new building is scheduled for April. Construction time is estimated at two years.
Shorenstein executives declined to estimate how much the project will cost, but it will be completed without city subsidies.
There's no word yet on who the tenants will be, though Shannon said preliminary conversations indicate there's high anticipation.
"We feel really good about the level of interest from the tenant community," he said.
555 City Center struggled at first to fill up after its anchor tenant, Ask.com, pulled out.
But Shorenstein executives said the building is now 100 percent leased — and that more than more than half of the companies there came from outside Oakland.
Shorenstein aims to make its newest building not only taller, but also more environmentally friendly.
Executives said the building, designed by architect Ted Korth of the firm Korth Sunseri Hagey, will be constructed to meet the standards of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System.
There are various levels of LEED certification, and Shorenstein development head Todd Sklar said he did not yet know what level of certification would be sought.
"We don't know yet," he said. "We know that we will be certified. We're going to be pushing it as hard as we can."
LEED certification would make the tower the largest privately owned green office building in downtown Oakland, executives said.
Contact Kelly Rayburn at
[email protected] or 510-208-6435.
Here's an image of the site from the article
Here's a rendering from abetteroakland.com
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