A preliminary application has been filed seeking the approval of a proposed Home Depot store at 5050 Broadway in Oakland. The project proposal includes the development of a Home Depot store offering a recycling program, a garden center, and onsite parking on a vacant property lot.
Broadway Rockridge LLC is the property owner. Lars Anderson & Associates is responsible for the design and construction.
5100 Broadway Rendering via Lars Anderson & Associates
The project site is a parcel spanning an area of 15.41 acres. The project proposes to construct a building yielding a total built-up area of 101,822 square feet, offering retail space for Home Depot. The site will also feature a garden center spanning an area of 16,710 square feet. The proposed building will be one story and rise to approximately 24 feet in height. With architectural features slightly taller; however, with grade differentials from the intersection the building will be as tall as 46 feet from intersection grade. An onsite parking lot will provide a total of 421 stalls.
Signage for the Home Depot building is also proposed. It will consist of the main wall identification sign “The Home Depot”, which will be 6 feet high by 73 feet wide. Secondary directional signs are also proposed that will consist of “Tool Rental”, “Lumber”, and “Garden Center” signs along the front of the building. A separate submittal for a Sign Package will be provided by Home Depot’s signage vendor during the construction document phase.
5100 Broadway Site View via Google Maps
Once site development and construction are completed, the proposed Home Depot store will employ approximately 145 to 175 full and part-time employees during 3 daily shifts.
The project site plan will provide three driveways; two of the driveways will be located on Pleasant Valley Avenue and one located on the Broadway.
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This is a horrific proposal; a warehouse big box on our main street? Less than 2 miles away from another Home Depot, with a parking garage on Broadway. Oakland deserves much better planning and development, especially at this prime location. The original retail shopping center design by JRDV International was far superior to this. A mixed-use, neighborhood shopping and housing is needed without a monstrous parking garage. RCPC where are you?
Couldn’t agree more with the above comment but I would add that all the NIMBY meddling in the previous concept which delayed it and delayed it eventually dooming it is a big reason why there’s been an empty lot for years and why they might end up with a Home Depot.
I agree a big box store, especially this big, is not appropriate for this location.
I think it’s a great idea in theory (convenience, sales tax)… but OMG the renderings… April Fools was six days ago. Does HD think Broadway/Pleasant Valley is an industrial area or highway interchange and thus this store would not necessarily look absolutely awful?
However, this could be a ploy by the Texas-based property owner to get the City of Oakland to reconsider his plans to build a life-style retail center (i.e. Broadway Plaza/Santa Row). Like “Oh, you didn’t like that plan because it didn’t include housing… well here’s a fugly big box store. The land is zoned for it, what are you gonna say now? Lawyer-up.”
SFYimby can you post previous proposals for the site for comparison?
Oakland already has 2 Home Depots, how about building a Lowes or some other hardware store there.
Grand Lake Ace Hardware is nearby. The area is already well served in that category. Home Depot may be trying to close its High Street and Emeryville stores. But this location is way too valuable for big box retail.
This site should be hundreds of units of housing.
The previous proposal died off because suburban style retail shopping centers don’t make sense anymore. It was a pretty dorky design. Neighbors have minimal power in developer-friendly Oakland. This proposal is one of the worst I’ve seen in decades of following such things hereabouts. Will the City further establish its lack of standards? So do YIMBYS like this concept? Hate it?
Let them do Santana Row in Oakland. I’d love that as there’s no retail in Oakland. But NO big box store!
Retail would be better. There’s another HD close by on 40th more convenient to business area of freeway and San Pablo. I’m not against HD per se but surely this 15 actress could be put to better use. How about a business Oakland doesn’t not already have?
This might be a rare instance when NIMBYs and YIMBYs unite in opposition. And I hope they do.
Speechless. Not sure I could come up with a worse idea for that location, either aesthetically or practically. I mean, there’s a Home Depot like 3 miles away….
It seems to me that we’re looking too narrowly at the possible uses to which this unique location can be put. In point of fact, we are blessed with an unparalleled opportunity, as it were, to kill two birds with one stone.
Build the A’s new ballpark at 51st and Broadway !!!
The Giants by chance had a similar park years ago, inherited from the Seals, when they came west. Having a ballpark in the middle of town, a civic and commercial bonanza the Giants backed into when they first relocated here, was consciously embraced when they broke ground on the walking-distance field at 3rd and King decades later. Baltimore, San Diego, and Seattle are just a few of the cities with newly flourishing downtown economies enjoying a civic renaissance from baseball, a thrill many enlightened cities can savor and enjoy, mere minutes from home or office.
The challenges presented by the current undeveloped site can be overcome without difficulty, and may even enhance the unique character of the erstwhile new park. Boston embraced the logistical challenges of a ballpark confined by an unyielding physical space, by erecting, and fully embracing, the Green Monster in left field. When the Dodgers set up shop in the Coliseum, in 1958, on an oval field nominally unfit for the National Pastime, they tailored their game to a left field only 251 feet from home plate, buttressed by a 40-foot-high mesh screen. Some batters prospered on cheap line shots to left that dropped gently to the outfield grass after having their force and trajectory entirely sapped by the screen. Others tinkered with their game styles and habits, with inconsistent results. Wally Moon, an outfielder traded to LA by the Cardinals before the 1959 season, found a way to hitch his left-handed swing to hit high-arcing flies over the absurdly shallow left field fence, accruing a flock of cheap homers (32 out of the 47 he hit in his first three years in LA). He was later heard to complain however that on the road he couldn’t shake his artificially hitched swing, and couldn’t help but hit innocuous flies to left nearly every other at bat. The Dodgers briefly capitalized on Moon’s good fortune by referring to his cheap home runs as “Moon shots.”
The physical challenges presented by the new ballpark site can be overcome with planning, guile, and a modicum of good fortune. The current surface of the undeveloped lot is hard and unyielding, so heavy machinery will be needed to pare down the existing concrete surface until a soil layer below is reached, sufficient to grow grass. (Alternately, the A’s can draft or develop future infielders who can instinctively glove blistering ground balls that rocket off the impenetrable infield surface, like Phillies’ infielders have done for decades.) Mouth guards emblazoned with the teams’ colors will shortly become standard issue.
The new left-field fence, probably only 212 feet from the plate, will provide the Athletics with certain clear advantages over visiting teams. The shortstop can play left field, freeing up an outfielder to play anywhere else in the field. However, this momentary gain in fielding may be offset by the need for stationing one defensive outfielder just off Pleasant Valley Road, near the Safeway, to flag down hard ground.balls hit by Shohei Ohtani and orher left-handed power hitters who take advantage of the extremely compacted outfield surface to propel ground balls through the wickets of the second baseman, accelerate while roaring through the cavernous outfields in right and center, and don’t rest until they bounce against Jamba Juice or collect in the stairwell at the Auto Club office.
The Athletics have made it clear that they are willing to refrain from pulling up stakes and slinking out of town, so long as they are presented with a Local Plan that provides future economic stability for the club, a disincentive to play summer day baseball in 113*F heat in Las Vegas, and a state-of-rhe-art ballpark that literally defies description.
We should act, and act now.
Not really a good idea. Ugly and not serving Oakland’s best interests.
I think it’s a great plan to have a large hardware store that can provide what Cole’s Hardware can’t provide such as lumber at a competitive price; water heater in an emergency. Great location in north Oakland. HD will provide substantial sales tax revenue.
There is literally a lumber yard a few blocks away
Ideally, the outer rim of this property would be housing, with retail nestled within. The new housing would face the Merrill Gardens, part of 51st St. & be kitty-corner to The Baxter. Ideally, some of the housing would be priced to accommodate the workers at the Rockridge Center, starting to create the work/live ideal we’re working for in the future, when hopefully, there will be fewer commuters having to head to work far away.
Doesn’t seem like the place for a Big Box store.
“Home” Depot? Who’s Home? Certainly not a ‘home’ for those who don’t have one! All this babble all the time about solving “the homeless problem.“ How about a modest housing project for those who need one. Not another mega-monster making matters worse!
Maybe we can re-architect the site with a Home Depot and 12 stories of housing above it?
horrible idea. there are two home depot stores in oakland and a nice ACE on college ave. how about smaller stores? home deot would be a behemoth! too big. too ugly, and the traffic would be HORRIBLE!
no Home Depot! Not a good fit.
We already have two wonderful neighborhood-focused, neighborhood-scale hardware stores within five minutes of this site (Cole Hardware and Ace Grand Lake). The neighborhood doesn’t need another mega-hardware store! What we need us HOUSING. This site is perfect for multi-family apartments or condos: There are new apartment complexes on two corners across the street from it, and a supermarket and other comvenience retail like dry cleaners and pizzeria just strips away. Thus Home Depot is a terrible idea.
This is awful, we don’t need Home Depot we need smaller retail store and maybe a nice coffee shop would be very nice.
ABSOLUTELY NOT! What a disgrace!! A Home Depo will completely destroy this part of town & will kill any chance the area has of vastly improving/ becoming a really great retail area. Any thing other than the original mall idea would be dumb as hell. There is so much money in the part of town. Rockridge, Temescal, Uptown, Piedmont, Kaiser, Sutter health, Oakland Tech high school (a few hundred steps away), Claremont Middle school a 10 min walk away. This area needs to retail. Restaurants, a movie theatre, cafes, clothing, etc. Why not just leave it the pike of dirt concrete it is rather than putting a Home Depot there.
I would love Santana row – this is awful – it will bring huge trucks traffic – folks standing on corner and etc
I think retail has always been hesitant to build a center like this because of crime in oakland- sad but that’s in part why we have such little retail- the rent , security, employee Issues adds into it
No no no no. We need shopping Walmat Winco. No one is building homes and gardens in this area. Emeryville and East Oakland is great for Home depot. PLEASE No Home depot
Oh My God No!
Stupid.
Horrible idea. How much more traffic & congestion do we need. And some more attractive larceny to boot? Let’s destroy the neighborhood for profit. Why not go down Broadway further where property would be a little cheaper on vacant lots next to Toyota dealership?
We don’t need another Home Depot, we don’t want another Home Depot! Please stop with all the problems this would add to Oakland.
This is hideous and sad and is a waste of a great marketplace for something that will serve the local community.
Absolutely NOT is my vote, also. The renderings are so unattractive–it just looks AWFUL. That ugly parking structure right on Broadway….I imagine the people in that new apartment building across the street are quaking in their boots. To have to look out the window everyday at such a monstrosity….I am a stock holder in Home Depot but I really oppose this.
The responses to this post are deplorable. A new Home Depot at Broadway and Pleasant Valley is a great idea. The current proposal is imperfect and local input needs to come forward to make it better. This NIMBYism by otherwise YIMBY minded people is just shocking hypocrisy! Oaklanders spend $1.4 BILLION a year in neighboring cities because for the last 40 years retailers prejudicially called Oakland a no-go zone. That’s finally being addressed and big name retailers are coming to Oakland. The Oakland and Emeryville Home Depots are the highest grossing locations in the entire Bay Area! That’s us… that’s us buying things at Home Depot, so some of you are really off that we don’t need it. That’s everyday Oaklanders and a lot of local workers buying near where they live and going to job sites elsewhere. Today the area around Broadway/Pleasant Valley is home to some of the highest earning households in the Bay Area… they spend a lot on home improvements. Instead of driving several miles they can go here… the contractors they hire can shop here instead of Emeryville where we split sales tax with Emeryville. Don’t shoot our collective foot because of baseless fear. We’re talking a 100 to 200 jobs *with benefits*, we’re talking people driving less to get what they need and we’re talking more sales tax staying in Oakland paying for Oakland services. Get a grip and come to your senses!
I think it is a terrible idea. As stated above, there is a huge Home Depot just a few miles away in Emeryville and Ace on Grand (and also College, but I much prefer the Grand Avenue Ace, though the College Avenue store is much closer to my house). I am not a big fan of Dan Kalb’s, but his idea of some retail and lots of housing (market rate and below market rate, like the development at 51st and Telegraph) is a great idea. No big box stores!
I support the proposal. I would love to see some development in the vacant lot, and this is something that would be a boon to the area in terms of jobs, and access to a larger array of hardware store than Cole/Ace can offer. I shop at the Cole Hardware on College on a weekly basis, but they lack many of the options available at something like a Home Depot. On the flip side, I never go to HD when I need to get advice or have a couple of small common items to pick up. I don’t see this as an either/or tradeoff between the stores.
A number of commenters are asking for a development that has space for “small” retail- yet nearby College Avenue is full of empty storefronts begging for retail space. There is NOT a lack of retail space in this area.
There is, however, a lack of housing in the area. A revised proposal with some housing units included would be more appealing. But, I say that knowing the proposed developments nearby have been shot down by NIMBY interests previously, and getting some development approved will be a huge uphill battle for the developers, sadly.
How about making space for small businesses, or stuff for the high schooler to do after school instead of roaming the streets (after school activates) such as bowling alley, park, trade school .. anything but a big box store….NO more big box store
The issue isn’t the Home Depot, its the terrible relationship of the proposed store and parking structure to the surrounding streets and residential uses. This needs to go back to the drawing board to show a pedestrian-scaled and activated ground-floor along Broadway and Pleasant Valley lining a parking below the store. Adding workforce housing above the store would be amazing, but the roof should at least have solar and/ or vegetation so the new development replacing the CCA campus has something attractive in the foreground.
Absolutely not! This is the worst possible idea possible. Well, maybe moving Shnitzer Steel would be worse. Maybe. Big box in a residential neighborhood with a giant parking lot is ridiculous. We need housing, not more traffic in an already crowded area. This would be a nightmare.
Great idea!!
I would love to see some retail there, along with affordable rentals. Oakland needs a quality clothing store or two. After Montclair Sports closed, there is nowhere I know of to shop for quality women’s clothing in Oakland, and I have to go to the city or to Walnut Creek. Not convenient! What about a Sur La Table, a shoe store, a shoe repair, a Chipotle or a big deli. This location draws from the Oakland hills, Rockridge, Piedmont, etc. Let’s upscale it a bit.
I love the idea it’s not a Home Depot it’s a fountain of tax money for the city. Plus it’s store I would actually go to. Cute little neighborhood retail is absolutely dead Amazon killed it. It’s a mistake to do the cute shopping thing as for residential we don’t need a stupid four story rest home, yeah if they were willing to do 30 stores we could talk but you know that can’t happen, take the Home Depot and run.
Is anyone from the Oakland redevelopment Authority reading this?!
OAKLAND HAS NO SHOPPING. WHEN I WAS YOUNG OAKLAND HAD SIX DEPARTMENT STORES: FOUR OF THEM WERE DOWNTOWN (CAPWELLS, KAHNS, PENNEY’S AND HALE BROTHERS). AND THERE WERE TWO OTHER DEPARTMENT STORES SEARS AND MONTGOMERY WARDS. NOW THERE ARE NONE. THE DEVELOPMENT OWNERS COULD NOT BUILD A SHOPPING CENTER ROCKRIDGE, HOVERVER, THEY CAN BUILD A HOME DEPOT BIG BOX STORE IN AN UPSCALE NEIHBORHOOD. WHO HAS COMPELLED THIS DEVELOPER TO DO THIS? THERE ARE CERTAIN PEOPLE IN OAKLAND AND OTHER CITIES THAT DON’T WANT OAKLAND TO PROSPER. DON’T LISTEN TO THEM. LET US BE ABLE TO BUY SUNDRY GOODS IN OAKLAND– JUST LIKE WE DID IN THE 1950’S AND 1960’S–NOT HARDWARE.
This is a great location for a Home Depot except for one thing: it’s a terrible location for a Home Depot.
Home Depot is not a hardware store. It’s a building supplies store that also sells hardware, major appliances, and garden supplies.
If people the other side of Piedmont want a saw, a box of nails, a set of door locks, or some water pipe, they’ll still go to their neighborhood hardware store on Grand Avenue. OTOH, if they want to buy sheet rock, a new washer and dryer, or outdoor light fixtures they might make the trip to Home Depot.
That said though, the original plan was for neighborhood retail, restaurants, and a movie theater. What happened to that? Lots of obstruction by the NIMBY crowd, plus a pandemic.
I dont understand why the 170 ft tall, 15-story Rockridge Tower SO AMAZINGLY APPROPRIATE here at 5150 Broadway, was submitted instead at 5295 College Ave??? At 5295 College it’s wiping out four small businesses, removing the 3-story Victorian House already on the lot, plus awkwardly surrounding another 1-story Victorian Law Office (home) with it’s massive concrete/glass/steel footprint. The insanity is so extreme there. Yet the proposed Tower offers a lot of housing: 50_2BR and 38_3BR units designed atop four stories of retail/office space & even including a basement parking lot for 110 cars, 38 bicycles… it all seems ideal for the empty unused concrete lot that’s been taunting us for a decade or more at corner of Broadway and 51st (5150 Broadway). What gives??? Is the probitive expense (aka greed) stopping common sense from taking the empty barren lot and finally using it?