1100 Broadway Rendering

The plans for a 20-story office building to rise over the 12th Street/City Center Bart Station at 1100 Broadway in Downtown Oakland, a development which includes the renovation and incorporation of the historic Key System Building next door, were approved back in 2008 but the project has yet to break ground.

According to the development team, they have been diligently working to find a potential anchor tenant for the project’s 310,000 square feet of space, but despite having talked with Salesforce, Uber, Levi’s, Clorox, the University of California and others, a commitment has yet to be secured and the office market in Oakland “is not yet robust enough to make the financing and construction of the Project feasible” without an anchor tenant willing to take at least 50 percent of the building.

And as such, SKS Partners is now seeking another one-year extension of their entitlements to develop 1100 Broadway, entitlements which are currently slated to expire at the end of this year.

Plans to build a 150-room hotel on the site were approved back in 1998, but those entitlements subsequently expired and the project was abandoned.

19 thoughts on “Approved Oakland Tower Waylaid by Lack of Demand”
  1. Seinfeld, anyone?
    I’m confused: did the (potential) developer actually make some announcement, or did something expire, or was there some other milestone? No offense, but this seems to be telling us nothing more than that nothing is happening…other than, of course, the comment that “the office market in Oakland is not yet robust enough to make the financing and construction of the Project feasible” during the biggest surge in rents the Bay Area has ever seen…which is to say it probably never will be (particularly if the public continues to subsidize people traveling to DSF).

    1. As reported above, “SKS Partners is now seeking another one-year extension of their entitlements to develop 1100 Broadway, entitlements which are currently slated to expire at the end of this year.”

    2. The entitlements are expiring, and it requires Planning Commission discretionary action to issue another extension.

  2. Time to put this back on the open market. If they can’t make this project pen out, then another developer can and should. I hope the planning commission turns down another extension.

  3. SKS, Shorestein, and their lenders, are stifling development in Oakland’s very tight office market in order to benefit their higher priced properties in San Francisco.

    It’s time that Oakland refuses extensions on these two prime downtown sites right next to the 12th Street BART station and instead promote them to out of SF developers.

  4. Hmm I wonder why no one wants their business in Oakland? Maybe it has something to do with the seasonal riots and violent anti business protests the city let’s happen multiple times a year. Just a thought.

    1. Why does Oakland have a lower downtown office vacancy rate than San Francisco if ” no one wants their business in Oakland?”

    2. I feel sorry for Oakland being the default pinata for just about every destructive riotous crowd. It isn’t fair. If your political action MO involves destruction of property then why not spread it around the Bay Area instead of focusing your aggression onto one struggling city? Trash downtown Dublin or Menlo Park for a change.

      Or better yet, channel protest into nonviolent civil disobedience. Enormous opposition can be overcome that way.

      1. Downtown Dublin?!?! I don’t think such a thing exists (or was that coda for “go into a field in the middle of nowhere”?)

        Anyway, civil disorder apparently is now very much a hipster thing. I think we should see this as a side effect of Oakland’s “Brooklynization”

        1. Dublin has a very nice downtown — Grafton Street, St. Stephen’s Green, plenty of lively pubs and whatnot. I enjoyed it when I visited.

      2. There is no “Downtown Dublin”. I guess one could trash a strip mall or big box store?

        And such a trashing expedition would require a LONNNNG commute to get there. If one is a dreadlocked “performance artist” living in an illegal second unit in the flatlands, downtown Oakland is much more convenient! (Plus, Dublin would probably call out the National Guard when the protestors first appear on a freeway on-ramp).

  5. Well yes – it is true- Oakland does pretty much have seasonal riots- but San Francisco has daily stinky urine and feces from passed out homeless everywhere. So people in glass houses shouldn’t cast stones. The whole region thriving should be the goal – not just a postage stamp sized corner of the San Mateo peninsula…

  6. I think the SF media has helped redirect many of the protests away from SF and into downtown Oakland by underplaying SF protests and highlighting those in Oakland.

  7. The idea that SF developers such as SKS and Shorenstein have aggressively marketed these downtown Oakland sites is not true. Anyone who goes to their web sites can easily see that their main focus is promoting and leasing their multiple $75psf properties in SF’s financial district.

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