325 7th Street Site

The plans for a pair of residential towers to rise up to 20 and 27 stories in height at 325 Seventh Street, on an S-shaped site extending from the corner of 7th and Harrison to 6th Street on the edge of Oakland’s Chinatown, were approved at the end of 2011.

And as approved, the project included 380 condos over 9,100 square feet of ground floor office and retail space and a four-story garage for 399 cars.

But the development team is about to return to city with a revised set of plans which will increase the project’s amount of retail and commercial space to 9,800 square feet but dramatically decrease the project’s height and number of new housing units to a total of 160.

We’ll keep you posted and plugged-in.

19 thoughts on “Major Oakland Condo Project Cut in Half”
  1. Looks like something out of a second-tier Chinese city, except in China they’d be building 50 identical sets of towers …

    1. We’d be willing to bet you’re thinking of the downsizing of CIM’s project on Parcel D in Jack London Square, which is kinda old news and a much less significant project at 114 units, down from a maximum of 200.

      1. Type 1 construction will be nearly impossible in Oakland — except for the most prime parcels — as long as contractor pricing is set by projects in San Francisco.

  2. Oakland’s potential in office and high rise construction is stunted by San Francisco interests. Oakland is at the mercy of SF developers and SF financiers who bank land in Oakland like Shorenstein at 12th & Jefferson, but won’t build in order to protect their SF rents and investments. This year office rents hit 62 per square foot at one point and still no office construction in Oakland due to these companies trying to fill their 75 per square foot developments in SF’s financial district.

  3. Can’t wait to hear from Saddie and others who think this is either good or doesn’t matter, because supply and demand never work i.e. a big supply isn’t better than a smaller increase in supply, because, uh, rich investors just buy stuff, and…….well, they never explain.

  4. It still applies to high rise residential development. The key to Oakland’s growth is to not allow SF interests to control DTO real estate. LA has plenty of high rise construction downtown with a fraction of Oakland’s rents. This “pencil out” excuse is just a way SF interests have of curtailing supply in Oakland. Newer construction downtown has 1bd room units going for over $3,000 a month. Oakland could easily fill high rise housing downtown any where near the three DTO BART stations.

  5. LA is one region in a way the Bay Area is not. I agree office and condo growth should be shifted to Oakland. In a single entity (SF and Oakland one city) that is what would happen. The SF CBD is at capacity, nearly, in terms of infrastructure. A 10 year moratorium on major office projects in SF is in store and would rectify many things. It won’t come from the SF PTB, but SF residents are unhappy with the deterioration in the quality of life here from all the development – many of them anyway – and at some point IMO a new Prop. M effort will emerge in SF. Restricting office development for a period of time – a breather period long overdue.

  6. 160 units is much better than none. Oakland has a lot of underutilized land. Plenty of room for more mid-rises. The Bay Area need more cost effective rent affordable development – not more Millenium towers.

  7. Too many parking spaces. Why would a central building need so many? Come on, Oakland. Keep the housing, slash the parking.

    1. There are no parking minimums in downtown Oakland, and there is a max of 1.25 spaces/unit. It’s up to the developer.

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