Plans have been approved for a seven-story apartment complex at 1899 Oxford Street in North Berkeley, Alameda County. The entitled project looks to add over two hundred dwelling units and retail to a corner lot directly across from the UC Berkeley campus. Non-profit Berkland Foundation is the property owner.
The 78-foot-tall structure is expected to yield around 93,400 square feet, including 65,600 square feet for housing and 3,890 square feet for ground-level retail. Parking will be included for 14 cars and 74 bicycles. Once complete, the building will have 222 apartments, including 33 deed-restricted affordable apartments. This will include 17 units for very low-income households and 16 for moderate-income households.
1899 Oxford Street seen from across Hearst Avenue, rendering by SDT Architects
1899 Oxford Street residential lobby and sidewalk view, rendering by SDT Architects
SDT Architects is overseeing the design, with an articulated facade visually separated by white and black insulated metal panels to ‘appear’ like several structures. The ground floor will be improved with transparent floor-to-ceiling glass for the lobby and retail spaces. Landscape architecture will be overseen by InsideOut Design, including sidewalk improvements, a central ground-level courtyard, and the rooftop deck.
According to reporting by The Daily Californian, Berkland Foundation is affiliated with Nathan George of NX Ventures. George has helped the non-profit acquire and advise on development for the property, which includes a surface parking lot and an existing apartment complex with eight rent-controlled units.
1899 Oxford Street sidewalk design, rendering by SDT Architects
1899 Oxford Street, image via Google Satellite
The half-acre property is located at the corner of Oxford Street and Hearst Avenue, across from the northwest corner of the iconic UC Berkeley campus. Future residents will be a couple of blocks away from Shattuck Avenue and close to the Downtown Berkeley BART Station.
The estimated cost and timeline for construction have not yet been established.
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Can’t believe it is a parking lot right now. Literally 2 blocks to the BART station.
But wonderful to see the land getting used for a better purpose now!
Excellent project, but it should have been done 30 years ago, given that it is a flat parking lot (look at how few cars are even in it in the photo).
Better late than never.
To be fair that parking lot once had the amazing to-go stand for Pedro’s Brazil Cafe from 2018-2020. Delicious food, sad that local business closed. Condos over coxinha though
Also it’s great to see this proposed facade is more intricate and prettier than the usual beige and brown apartment box
The stand for the Brazil Cafe was at Walnut and University, a couple of blocks away from this.
So pleased to see this approved!
No denying that downtown Berkely could use a lot of new high-density housing, but I wish the City would insist on better-designed buildings. So far virtually every building approved in downtown Berkeley is some paint-by-numbers job. This particular design is really outdated with is oversized pseudo-Craftsman knee braces (made of styrofoam) and boring facade “articulation” to make it sort of look like several smaller buildings. In this case you have a big ol parking lot acorss from UC Berkeley. Go big or go home! Make it modern! No Starbucks-style beige nation mediocraty please.
That said, I have seen much worse.
“Berkeley”
Modernists want every building to be an icon that calls attention to itself.
They have no idea of how to create an attractive urban fabric, as traditional cities always did.
Housing on that parking lot was proposed 30 or 40 years ago, and it was stopped primarily by one neighborhood NIMBY – an elderly lady who spent hundreds of hours on it.
Housing was demolished on this site when Oxford St. west of campus was widened to four lanes — one of many mid-century traffic engineering projects in Berkeley. You can see that the site tapers and Oxford St. becomes wider just north of Hearst: this extra street width is the transition between the 4-lane Oxford south of Hearst and 2-lane Oxford north of Hearst. Can you believe they bulldozed an apartment building to create that bit of transitional street width?
It was a gas station for years, which always used to park a car blocking the sidewalk. Then it was a parking lot for years. Now, it will be housing once again, repairing some of the damage done by the mid-century traffic engineers.