OAKLAND | 500 Kirkham St. | 233 FT | 23 FL

[Pedestrian]

Supersized Plans and Problems for this BART Adjacent Project
February 26, 2018

While plans for a 417-unit development to rise up to 8 stories in height on the vacant 3-acre Caltrans lot bounded by Kirkham, 7th, Union and 5th Streets, a block from the West Oakland BART station and across from The Crucible, were approved back in 2016, the ground was never broken.

And with Panoramic Interests now leading the charge, plans for over 1,000 units to rise up to 23 stories and 233 feet in height upon the 500 Kirkham Street site have been drawn and will be presented to Oakland’s Design Review Committee on Wednesday.

Designed by Lowney Architecture and dubbed “The Hub,” the new plans now include a total of 1,032 residential units, the vast majority of which (758) would be two-bedrooms averaging 514 square feet apiece, along with one (1) studio unit, eight-seven (87) one-bedrooms, one hundred (100) three-bedrooms, sixty-four (64) four-bedrooms and twenty-two (22) ten-bedroom “rooming house” units.

The development includes over 44,000 square feet of ground floor retail, restaurant and “flex space” fronting 7th and 5th Streets as well as along two new pedestrian alleys between the development’s three buildings which would be built in two phases, with the 23-story tower at 7th and Union following on the heels of the eight (8) and nine (9) story mid-rise buildings to the west . . . .

And while Oakland’s Planning Department has been working with the project team to reduce the proposed development’s “monotonous and bulky massing,” department staff “remains concerned that the buildings are not sited to provide an inviting site plan with a rich public-private interface, and that the buildings are not yet elegant and attractive.”

http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2...t-project.html

[Urbannizer]

After backlash, developer tweaks plan for car-free 1,000 units at West Oakland BART

A $300 million West Oakland housing development that hoped to be car-free is pushing ahead — but with the addition of some parking places.

Panoramic Interests plans to build 1,032 units with 44,000 square feet of retail space at 500 Kirkham St., a 3-acre site adjacent to the BART station. The only catch was the grand total of parking spaces that it wanted to build: eight.

Earlier this year, city staff criticized the proposal, writing in a February report that the lack of parking "may be of a concern in the surrounding neighborhood."

Now nearing the third design review meeting in the fall — with hopes of breaking ground in spring 2019 — Panoramic Interests has increased the number of parking spots to 48.

“We still think it’s unnecessary, but we’re compromising,” said Patrick Kennedy, head of Panoramic Interests. The company also finished a 200-unit project at 1321 Mission St. in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood without parking, and recently broke ground on a $100 million apartment building at 12th and Harrison streets in SoMa, also parking-free.

The development would include one 23-story tower, plus two smaller buildings reaching eight and nine floors, respectively. Lowney Architecture designed the project, and Pankow Builders is the general contractor.