Developer SAJ Eyes Office-to-Resi Conversion in Lafayette

SAJ Development wants to swing a wrecking ball into three office buildings in Lafayette to erect a 90-unit apartment building in an upscale city long opposed to affordable housing.

The locally based developer filed revised plans to replace the offices with a seven-story, 171,400-square-foot complex at 1001 Oak Hill Road, the San Francisco Business Times reported. The city will consider the project on March 17.

The application came as housing advocates sued the East Bay city for creating “misleading and unrealistic housing sites” to satisfy state-mandated housing goals. The lawsuit by the Housing Action Coalition accused Lafayette of “pretending” to comply with the state housing element, a planning blueprint required of every city and county across the state every eight years.

Lafayette’s alleged shell game includes relying on faith-based institutions and longtime businesses with no plans to develop housing as potential building sites for homes, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit seeks a court to compel the city to adopt a revised plan with an update to its zoning laws. The city must rezone to build 2,114 homes, 943 of them affordable, by 2031. Within the decade through 2019, the city permitted 115 homes.

SAJ could help remedy that by its mixed-use project calling for 79 market-rate apartments and 11 affordable apartments, including five for very-low-income households and six for moderate-income households.

What appears to be a U-shaped complex, designed by Berkeley-based Trachtenberg Architects, would be draped in two shades of brown, with tiered roof decks, and floor-to-ceiling corner windows with exterior balconies, according to a rendering.

The developer would employ a nearly 23 percent state density bonus in exchange for the affordable housing, plus a state streamlining law for faster approvals. A cost and timeline for construction were not disclosed.

SAJ applied using Senate Bill 330, which effectively freezes zoning that’s in place at the time a project is submitted, limits the number of public hearings to five and suspends or eliminates restrictions on housing development.

The law aims to prevent cities from delaying projects unnecessarily over subjective standards, along with several other laws meant to stop cities from blocking affordable housing.

The developer had submitted an earlier version of the project in 2022 that called for tearing down just two of the three offices to build 53 units. City officials approved that version in May, before SAJ revised its plans. Jeff Stone, owner of Diamond Construction, was listed as the property owner operating through SAJ Development, according to SFYimby.

Lafayette was once a battleground for the region’s housing wars, with two lawsuits, a ballot referendum and more than 100 public hearings that delayed a 315-unit apartment building for almost a dozen years.

Last year, the state Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from a neighborhood group, allowing the development to move forward. The project has not broken ground.

Membership in SAJ Development, led by Stone, includes Diamond Swope Holdings, the Steven Kay Trust, the Griggs Community Property Trust and Outdo, based in Lafayette, according to state business records. Another firm, Valley Oak Capital, is based in Texas.

— Dana Bartholomew