The refined designs for a 159-unit hotel, 72 apartments and 16,000 square feet of ground floor retail space to rise up to six stories in height at 2401 Broadway, stretching from 24th to 25th Street along the former Auto Row in Uptown Oakland, will be presented to the city’s Design Review Committee on Wednesday.
A joint venture between West Elm HOTELS, the Signature Development Group and Jordan Real Estate Investments, the proposed development would restore and incorporate the historic façade of the Oakland Mitsubishi service center building on the site, an original Auto Row façade which was designed by Frederick H. Meyer and constructed around 1910.
But the bulk of the development would rise upon the dealership’s parking lot, extending up Broadway to 25th Street, with a new mid-block bar atop a two-story spur of the development and garage entrance on 25th.
And if all goes as planned, the hotel could be operational and the apartments occupied in 2020.
As much as I’m generally in favor of preservation, I can’t say this approach has anything to recommend: as is often the case, the newer building looms incongruously over the old, and even worse, it appears the latter has been reduced to nothing more than a facade.
I’m sure they can do better…indeed I think the only question is “could they do worse?”
while i hear your sentiment, i think this boils down to preference. those arches as actually pretty nice on 24th, tall and wide. and revealing them again at the corner is a kind of restoration.
more broadly speaking, the area is developing an architectural language that permutes old and new, which is at its core, i think, an optimistic architecture. not every project will be a slam dunk, but it’s a design trajectory worth pursuing.
plus the planners love it soooo might as well please them and get the damn thing built.
Indeed, but why set-back that part of the building? I think as a base it would work out nicely.
It’s had to make precise judgments given the (CAUTION: RANT AHEAD) poor quality of the rendering: for example, if you look at the southward detailed rendering, it shows a half-window of the second story clearing the facade; and given the setback, one would expect that to be completely obscured by a northward view. Yet in the actual n/w view, the ENTIRE WINDOW IS SHOWING. There’s also 6 bays in the n/w view and only 5 in the s/w….whiskey tango _______… people; I wonder what the blueprints for this Twilight Zone structure are going to look like.
The setback was requested by planning staff.
Well then I guess it’s a matter of opinion…mine is right and theirs is wrong 🙂 Seriously, though, if you’ll provide a link to the document I’ll see what they were hoping to accomplish…I’m hoping it wasn’t this.
Of course it was… they are seriously out of touch. First, they want everything to look alike. Why? Last, they’re following a two decades old idea that historic and new need to be set back from one another to prevent someone from thinking the new part is actually part of the old part. So? Otherwise, this is exciting – though I wish it were twice as tall.
Looks solid. Excited to see uptown (esp Broadway) fill in.
I don’t care what it is or what it looks like, as long as it’s new housing in Oakland. Install lethal mantraps to catch any wayward arsonistas.
This will be a great addition to Uptown Oakland. One historic building incorporated into new development while another surface parking lot is filled. Another plus is the badly needed 159 hotel rooms. Oakland is way underserved in hotel rooms considering its size as well as its central Bay Area location. My only complaint is that 2020 is too long to wait for this great development.
build build build! cycle just needs to last 1-2 more years and oakland may be irreversibly transformed
Let us hope.
4 years later…the building boom continues. Lets go Oakland!
That is one brutal facadectomy.
Drove by here the other day, and it’s well underway (concrete base completed and a couple stories of framing in)
Can’t say I ever warmed up to the design – which apparently will end up as shown herein – and I’m sure Signature is anything but pleased at the timing, but too late for regrets.
Anyway, I’m guessing this will be one of the last notable developments we’ll see over here for at least a few years.