Plans to level the shuttered East Bay Smog Center building on the northwest corner of Shattuck and 65th Street, between Telegraph Avenue and Adeline Street in Bushrod, across from the Nomad Café, are in the works.

And as proposed, a contemporary four-story building with 18 residential units over nearly 2,000 square feet of ground floor commercial space and a garage for 18 cars would rise up to 43 feet in height upon the 6501 Shattuck Street site.

As designed by Dinar & Associates for the project team, the development would yield 6 junior one-bedroom units, 6 one-bedrooms and six two-bedrooms. While no official tenants have been identified, “it is anticipated the small restaurants and cafes would occupy the [ground floor commercial] space and that outdoor seating would also be provided to enhance pedestrian scale and urban experience.” And the project team is positioning to break ground this coming January (2019).

And yes, the underground tanks from the onetime gas station site have been removed and the site has already been remediated. We’ll keep you posted and plugged-in.

17 thoughts on “Plans for Infilling a Shuttered Service Station Site on Shattuck”
  1. Not amazing but 24 more bedrooms than we had before. Question is why the zoning isn’t more generous here. The city of Oakland should *radically* upzone all of its land that adjoins Berkeley, just to make them angry. Same for Piedmont.

    1. There are a number of properties in the latter where – it would appear from simply looking at maps – the city line actually runs thru buildings…. your proposal could make for some interesting additions !!

      1. There are certainly buildings with the city line running through them. Example: 3610 Peralta “in Emeryville” is actually about 20% in Oakland … for reasons I’m sure are related to cosmic unfairness, 95% of the property taxes are assessed on the Emeryville side of the line. But there are many examples.

        1. Oakland actually gets a lot of tax revenue from Emeryville related to the impacts from the commercial retail development.

          1. Haha, but no. Emeryville takes the majority of the sales tax revenues, and it sucks up all of the inner East Bay’s shopping, while at the same time Emeryville has woefully underproduced housing affordable for the service jobs it creates, thereby outsourcing its hardship to other cities. Emeryville has also outsourced 100% of its transportation needs to Oakland and Berkeley.

            “Net loss in retail sales for some cities provides further evidence of redistribution. Four cities, Oakland, San Pablo, Alameda and El Cerrito, all declined in retail sales … Despite the fact that Oakland was lucky enough to share project sites with Emeryville, Oakland appears to still suffer from sales leakage to Emeryville … Emeryville’s redevelopment has resulted in a net revenue gain for the City while leaving other cities the burden of providing affordable housing and public services.

            Like many cities in California, Emeryville has responded to structural problems in local government finance by prioritizing land use and public resources for retail development in order to generate sales tax.”

          2. Emeryville is often cited as an example of Oakland’s incompetence – why didn’t THEY do something similar? – but the claim is dubious: exactly what (developable) site was there in Oakland with freeway access, and proximate to high-income households in Berkeley, Piedmont and North Oakland?

            A better solution would be to pool sales tax revenue and apportion it to cites based on their populations, or if we want to relate it to where the money likely came from, their aggregated incomes.

      1. Two? If you mean MacArthur, it’s 25 blocks away…some might not call that “very” close (some might not even call it “close”).

          1. Perhaps, but that isn’t really very close either: I play trivia at a bar on Telegraph – so proximate but actually a few blocks closer than this – but usually park up on College and walk down: it’s a 15-20′ walk (so prob 20-30′ for BART>this site) It’s flat and not generally unpleasant, but “very close” is streeeeeeeeetching it)

  2. Would be interested to see if the Density Bonus is applied (for this & other projects) & how it’s broken down. I reviewed the state law & you need a pretty large site to make it DB feasible.

  3. Ya I meant Rockridge. Ya its not too close but not really far either. But Ashby is very close. Very close for some density. I was thinking if I need to get to the city / south bay I walk to Ashby – 5 min. If I am going inland east bay I walk 10 – 15 to rockridge, of if you are lazy transfer at macarthur but would probably take longer than just walking plus you get some exercise.

    I used to live at Telegraph and Ashby – both stations about a 10 minute walk. I walk fast though, admittedly.

  4. I own property very close by, are you sure your reporting is correct? I had heard there is ongoing litigation between the current owner (who by the way is a notorious slumlord in the east bay) and the previous owner of East Bay Smog Center.

    Anyway, I hope it happens but I’m not holding my breath. (BTW, Ashby BART is the closet station.)

    1. Ah yes, that particular slumlord. Well if it comes down to it he can always hire someone to torch the half-built building, like last time.

  5. Yay, such good news! This site is a quick walk – 4 blocks – to Ashby BART. Can you include more info about where the project is in the entitlement process? I live 1.5 blocks away and want to voice my support (and push for even more density!). This site has been a horrible blight for years. Take a look at the City’s code enforcement data and you will literally see at least a hundred complaints for graffiti and illegal dumping, among other things. And can’t wait for more retail serving this area. YAY! Change is good!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *