Last Week, the Berkeley City Council met to discuss the proposal of a new eight-story apartment building located at 2109 Virginia Street. Despite pushback from some community members, the city council chose to unanimously approve the project as a source of much-needed housing for the neighborhood. Once completed, the project will bring 110 new units of housing within easy walking distance of Downtown Berkeley.
The project is being brought by a partnership of American Commonwealth Associates LP and Panoramic Interests. The two have leveraged a density bonus in the building application in order to justify the building’s increase in scale from its immediate surroundings. The total projected height of the project is expected to reach more than 89 feet, with a total projected area of more than 113,000 square feet.
2109 Virginia Street Context Elevation, image by Tractenberg Architects
The building’s units will skew towards family-oriented sizes, with 41 two-bedroom and 27 two-bedroom-plus units making up more than half of the proposed residences. The remaining units will be divided into 14 studio and 28 single-bedroom units. 18 of the total units are to be designated for low-income households, keeping with the requirements for the project application.
2109 Virginia Street Sample Unit Plans, image by Tractenberg Architects
Other building features include an open space courtyard on the second story, providing a building common area and increased access to natural light for the building’s units. The project will also retain a small commercial space at the corner of Shattuck and Virginia Street, providing easy access to retail for both building residents and other locals.
2109 Virginia Street Floor Plans, image by Tractenberg Architects
Trachtenberg Architects is responsible for the design. Updated renderings are consistent with their earlier design of the project reported on by SF YIMBY, but with a more fleshed-out facade detail. The planned exterior will be clad in a thin off-white brick veneer, alternating with wood-look siding to create a softer and more natural presence. Floor-to-ceiling windows will face Shattuck Avenue on the building’s ground floor. Meanwhile, upper levels will be articulated with metal balconies to break up the building’s mass and provide residents with outdoor access.
2109 Virginia Street Ground Level Rendering, image by Tractenberg Architects
2109 Virginia Street Distance Rendering, image by Tractenberg Architects
The roughly half-acre property site is located at the corner of Virginia Street and Shattuck Avenue in North Berkeley, close to Downtown Berkeley. Future residents will be less than ten minutes from the UC Berkeley campus and 15 minutes from the Downtown Berkeley BART Station on foot. In addition to excellent walkability and public transportation, the project plans to include 109 vehicle parking spaces and 64 bicycle parking spaces to round out residents’ transportation options.
2109 Virginia Street Site Location, image via ArcGIS Online
2109 Virginia Street Current Site, image by Google Street View
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It’s too bad to lose the Swiss/German architecture on the corner, but it’s sitting on a large surface parking lot. Terrible use of land as is. This reminds me a little of the Lucky 13 property at 2140 Market St, San Francisco. Great punk rock dive bar, but basically a single story shack sitting on a parking lot. There was a huge uproar to lose the bar. Unfortunately, it’s in the wrong place at the wrong time…too much money to be made as a 5-over-1 compared to what it’s currently making. Other bars like the Page @ Page and Divis, which is sitting below a few floors of housing, are safe.
plus, in 75 or 100 years when these 5 over 1 buildings are at the end of their lifespan they will be considered classic examples of early 21st century architecture. There will be beloved local businesses that have been operating in them for decades and neighbors and historical review boards will be lamenting the loss of iconic cement panel sided buildings. Sounds dumb, but that’s how nostalgia works.
That’s exactly right. We lose the Lucky 13 bar, but we gain a new, larger, better ground floor space where a new business can become iconic like Lucky 13 was…with housing for 100 people above it.
We lose…an empty mattress store!?…we gain a new theatre and housing for 100 people.
Victorian architecture was probably complained about in 1910 as being cookie cutter!
Fun fact! this is next door to the SFH turned pediatric office I mentioned in the comments on the 2712/14 Telegraph post.
I was sad when Poulet closed, but besides being pretty that building wasn’t doing much. This stretch of Shattuck is perfect to build up. Plenty of amenities and good bus access for students and locals alike.
You guys have good points, but I would challenge you with this:
why can’t new buildings be pretty AND have a lot of apartments?
Unfortunately, this is the style of the time, which also means that it’s using a lot of standard components and thus a lot cheaper to build than other options that people might find more aesthetically pleasing. I also don’t think the current build’s chalet styling would translate onto 8 stories.
and if you stand and look at this existing building, is it really that pretty? Its a fake re-creation of a English half-timbered building. The style was hundreds of years old when this was built and from half a world away. Architectural beauty is all in the eye of the beholder and the trends of the day, new apartments may all look similar but I don’t think they look nearly as bad as most people seem to assume the do, I think its more of a reaction to the ubiquity of them. Most styles of buildings we revere now were thought of as boring, lifeless, or too common when they were being built. Brooklyn brownstones elicited lots of editorials about how they were just boxes extending out into empty farmland. The old suburban houses that are so sacred in the bay area literally had a folk song written about how ugly they were (little boxes on the hillside little boxes filled with ticky tacky), and in the 1950’s and 1960’s we tore down thousands of victorian mansions because they were old fashioned and hard to maintain. Getting too caught up in how individual buildings look is missing what makes cities vibrant and livable (streetscape, walkability, vegetation, and above all else people!)
I might add that half timbered buildings were themselves cheap housing when they were invented. People used mud and plaster as walls instead of wood because it was cheaper and easier to source… sounds similar to why all apartments are now covered in cement panels.