San Ramon-based SummerHill Apartment Communities aims to replace a San Mateo office building in the Peninsula municipality with a 230-unit apartment building that could rise as high as seven stories and become the latest in a wave of multifamily development, the San Francisco Business Times reported.
The office building goes back to the 1950s and totals 30,000 square feet at 220 West 20th Avenue. The apartment building would amount to nearly 200,000 square feet of space near the city’s center.
Fifty-year-old SummerHill, led by Douglas McDonald, has developed over 5,000 units across the west coast, according to its website.
SummerHill’s plan takes the total number of apartments proposed for San Mateo to 3,000 since voters in the city of around 100,000 pass Measure T. The law allows for greater height and density levels for residential projects located near transit or along commercial corridors in the city.
The measure was billed as a way to reverse the effects of years of zoning that kept residential options for transit riders at a minimum.
Developers have embraced Measure T, as evidenced by Prometheus Real Estate Group’s recently filed plans for an apartment complex that would rise six stories on the edge of the city’s center.
Multifamily developers also have taken issue with the City of San Mateo’s plans to bolster renter protections. Prometheus has joined in pushing back on city plans to enact new laws they say will prevent renters from being displaced as the city enters what some observers believe will be its busiest cycle of housing development in a generation.
Drawing much of the criticism from the multifamily developers is a proposal to add protections to a California state law that prohibits no-cause evictions after a tenant has been in place for 12 months. San Mateo officials have discussed shortening the standard to 11 months.
— Jerry Sullivan
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