New plans have been filed for a seven-story apartment complex at 2109 Virginia Street in North Berkeley, Alameda County. The proposal will replace the existing commercial structure with 132 homes. AKR Property Management is the property owner.
Limited information has been published about the project so far. The pre-application describes the proposal as a seven-story mixed-use complex with 84,800 square feet of housing, 1,750 square feet of retail, and parking for 93 cars. Demolition will be required for the existing building, an attractive but non-landmarked two-story commercial building wrapped with a timber frame and stucco exterior along the second floor.
Trachtenberg Architects is the project applicant. The Berkeley-based firm has been responsible for many of the most significant proposals across the city, including two of the three tallest towers expected to rise at 1974 Shattuck Avenue and 2190 Shattuck Avenue in Downtown Berkeley.
The 0.51-acre property is located along Shattuck Avenue and Virginia Street on a property bound by Walnut Street and Cedar Street. Residents will be close to the block-wide UC Berkeley Student Organic Garden. The northwest corner of the UC Berkeley Campus is around three blocks away.
Art Kapoor of AKR Property Management is the property owner, filing through the American Commonwealth Associates LP.
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I’m all for infill but with all the empty lots in Berkeley why the need to tear this down?
In fact, looking at google maps there’s a giant parking lot right next door!
Just looking at the character of the existing facade vs. what a new 7-story will look like…
Horrible location! We can’t allow this charming building to be torn down.
The parking lot nextdoor is a superfund clean up from Virginia Cleaners.
Our family has been on Walnut Street since 1966. We have been opposed to development that will destroy tiered bay views and put other homes into the shadows of towers.
This building used to have a corner drugstore/soda shop and butcher shop.
Shattuck and the University Ave are becoming canyons. Solano, Ashby and College Ave will be next.
Oh boy, another Trachtenberg giant rectangle. No wonder they pump designs out so quickly; one design for everything. We know who to thank when Berkeley is covered with cheap looking, cheap in fact buildings we’ll want torn down in 30 years. Bravo!
This is a landmark for me. Tom’s corner drugstore housed a short bar with 2 very tall bar stools set beneath an animated Hamm’s beer sign, a pharmacy, and an extensive array of candy bars opposite the bar. Tom served the beer drinkers, never more than one at a time, and us the young candy oglers with more patience than he truly possessed, as his countenance betrayed him. He seemed a bit grim, yet was always civil, waiting as long as it took for me to conclude yet again that there really wasn’t anything better than a Uno bar.
The property was built in 1982. So not a landmark. Also, the development includes much if the surrounding parking lot. Further, the lot is rectangular… so what kind of building do you expect Shulamit? We can’t have cheaper housing if you all fight every development.
According to the preliminary application, the project DOES include the parking lot. Apparently, it is now economically feasible to remediate the toxics.
A couple of comments mention the corner drugstore and soda shop. I remember going there in about 1971 and asking for an ice-cream soda: the owner said he stopped buying ice cream when the price went up. Nostalgia for a store that became economically unviable over a half-century ago should not stop us from building housing that is needed today.
There is plenty of affordable housing in Berkeley that doesn’t require demoing and building monoliths that change the neighborhood and destroys the persona of the street. It takes sensible rental policies, where it doesn’t allow tenants to extricate over $100,000 from an owner just so they can get back into their own house. These types of policies keeps units from being rented and cause supply constraints in the market. We live behind where the new building will go up and oppose a 7 story behemoth. Get reasonable people. And the whole argument for expanding zoning by the council and board was to “target the wealthy neighborhoods”. How is this supposed to be any bit fair, it is some colonial era retaliatory rhetoric that is driving this vs. common sense housing policies.
Reading these comments make me really want to see the building torn down. Nothing like seeing rich property owners and folks living in a rich neighborhood get a little less.