Formal permits have been filed for a residential redevelopment at 1130 Oxford Street in Northbrae, Berkeley. The project will replace a formerly Berkeley Unified School District-owned school campus with 32 houses. Panoramic Interests is responsible for the application.
Studio KDA is responsible for the site plan and design. The project will produce 48,480 square feet across 32 new homes, averaging around 1,500 square feet per residence. The three-story structures will each contain a single-car garage. The application invokes Senate Bill 330 to streamline the approval process, and SB 1123 for ministerial approval of a masterplan starter home project.
1130 Oxford Street, site map by Studio KDA
The property is located along Oxford Street between Eunice Street and Los Angeles Avenue. Future residents would be a half-hour walk from Downtown Berkeley, or ten minutes by bicycle.
Demolition of the existing building is required for the development. The property has been occupied by the Oxford Public School since 1911, with the current three-story building constructed in 1965 and remodeled in the 1990s.
Subscribe to YIMBY’s daily e-mail
Follow YIMBYgram for real-time photo updates
Like YIMBY on Facebook
Follow YIMBY’s Twitter for the latest in YIMBYnews
Not to sound like a NIMBY, but with a growing population doesn’t a school campus seem like something that makes sense to hold onto? Why was it abandoned?
The number of children being born is declining rapidly. There are going to be a lot of empty schools in the coming years.
It was abandoned because it is sitting on an earthquake fault. State law does not allow schools to sit on fault lines but apparently it is ok to build homes over them.
I love how we are committed to a single reason for everything. Yes the entire neighborhood sits on a faultline; yes the # of kids is plummeting and NIMBY comments will out weigh YIMBY ones. We just need one on the fire danger of more dense housing. Grateful that BUSD was able to close a school. Looking at you Oakland.
The school was abandoned because it sits on an active geologic slide zone. The land will slide down the hill in a large (and totally expected) earthquake. It will be difficult to get emergency vehicles up to those streets in that scenario. Not a great place for a school or dense housing. But money always takes precedence over human safety.
Unlike the rest of the neighborhood, the proposed residential development will be designed to modern seismic standards. When the Hayward fault slips, these houses will be the only ones left standing.
Let’s hope the “liberals” in the Berkeley hills don’t come out with pitch forks and gasoline. Semi -high density housing in the hills is heresy to the old, wealthy white folks who live there… And surely they are kicking and screaming about this development even though it’s still a bunch of single family homes with front and back yards…, not apartments, or anything taller than two stories. I guarantee only someone very wealthy will be able to afford one of these homes. Affordable housing in the hills would be asking too much of these hypocrites who push the apartments, low income housing, and the homeless down the hill… West Berkeley is their dumping ground.
They think they are different because of their modern political sensibilities but in practice it is the same de facto segregation as the days of de jure redlining and covenants.