Originally approved for development back in December of 2014, the entitlements to develop 235 apartments over 14,000 square feet of ground floor commercial space and parking for 239 cars upon the Wood Street District block known as Development Area 8, fronting Wood Street between 20th and West Grand Avenue, to the northeast of West Oakland’s historic 16th Street Train Station, officially expired last month.
But as proposed and slated to be approved by Oakland’s Planning Commission tomorrow, the project team would be granted another year to break ground for the modular Wood Street development.
And according to Rick Holliday of Holliday Development, the project team is prepared to proceed with Stage 1 of the two-stage project in 2018 and possible Stage 2 as well (assuming a legacy railroad spur on the southern half of the Central Station site is able to be removed in a timely fashion).
So many beautiful, mature trees in those renderings.
It’s nice they’re gonna plant full grown beauties into a development.
Bleak.
They look like eucalypti to me…but I’m really more interested in planting a piling or two…or 156, than a forestation effort.
And it’s unfortunate they didn’t start closer to the station itself, since that would – hopefully – encourage some sort of rehab work on it.
I can feel my lungs seizing up at the thought of all those lovely, lovely diesel particulates and aerosolized rubber particles (and fine PM 10 and 2.5) from the freeway location.
I mean…I know we need infill housing, but right next to freeways?
Gotta agree. Oakland has plenty of empty or underutilized land. Large surface parking lots, dilapidated one story unreinforced old industrial buildings all available to be redeveloped.
The BAAQMD land use guidance calls for trees on these lots adjacent to freeways in order to catch particulate pollution and improve the air quality for the entire neighborhood.
Of course SF and Oakland Planning both ignore public health, focus on greed, and build housing on these sites. About the least progressive thing they could do.
Plant the trees on this lot and build the housing 1 block away….
How does SF Planning have anything to do with this? How is it a battle of progressive vs non-progressive? Just seems silly. You could make the same argument for the whole Brooklyn Basin project
I happen to believe in science and facts to inform land use planning – just my personal bias. The good people at the air district – who work with facts on the science of air pollution – would strongly recommend that people not immediately beside a concentrated source of air pollution. Because you know – dying of cancer and stuff is kind of a bummer. And like cigarettes – they have proven beyond any reasonable doubt that is exactly what happens with living next to freeways.
So I would associate ‘progressive’ with Less pollution and ‘regressive’ with More pollution – but hey – if you think it should be the other way around…
To be factual – as you would say – your link is to a study about the general relationship b/w air pollution and lungs disease(s), not specifically living next to a freeway; that having been said, I believe there are guidelines – in SoCal, IIRC – to the effect that residential development within 500′ of a major highway should be discouraged. And it seems silly to say planning depts “build housing” since, of course, they don’t do anything of the sort…perhaps you mean to say they “don’t prohibit building housing.”
But of course those would be in normal times when luxuries like good planning and quality of life can be recognized: haven’t you got the message yet that we’re in a “crisis”; that we shouldn’t just allow, but actually encourage, every Tom, Dick and Aditya to migrate here and set up shop b/c while the world may have Square and Stripe it doesn’t yet have Sprat and Squilt and Spuch and this is the only place where that can happen? And that requires housing – cheaply built but highly priced – every wide spot in the road where it can be squeezed in.
How about those highrises in SF on Rincon Hill right next to the Bay Bridge? Plenty of pollution there. There are particles next to all freeways including those next to expensive SF properties.