Berkeley City Council Approves City’s Tallest Apartments

Berkeley’s skyline is going to rise a bit taller after a new apartment project got the green light.

On June 3, Berkeley City Council voted unanimously to approve a 28-story residential tower at 1950-1998 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeleyside reported. At 312 feet tall, it would be the new tallest building in the city, 5 feet higher than the University of California, Berkeley’s Campanile bell tower.

Development plans from NX Ventures, Rhoades Planning Group and Trachtenberg Architects call for the building to hold 599 apartments, 58 of which would be set aside for very-low-income tenants, earning 50 percent of area median income. In Berkeley that amounts to $54,500 for one person.

The mixed-use development would also have more than 16,000 square feet of commercial space, including a rooftop restaurant, to replace a strip of restaurants including a McDonald’s, Vietnamese joints and the Spats bar. The project would take up the entire block of Shattuck between University Avenue and Berkeley Way.

Berkeley’s Zoning Adjustments Board approved the project in February, but the project faced pushback in March from a San Francisco native who submitted a handwritten appeal to the board to preserve the city’s “culture and lifestyle” by rejecting the development.

Developer Mark Rhoades told the city council on June 3 that the development is “a reflection of the changed housing equity values in our city of Berkeley, and a changed approach to housing production in the state of California.”

Central Berkeley City Council member Igor Tregub defended the move, saying the site is “the place to build a tall building.”

“It is right in the heart of the downtown core, and I could really see this activating, once fully built, this very important part of my district,” he said.

Rhoades hopes for his development group to start construction in two to three years. In the meantime, he doesn’t plan on closing any of the businesses until the firm is ready to secure building permits and break ground, assuaging Tregub’s fears about businesses shuttering only for projects to stall, as has happened with other downtown Berkeley developments.

— Chris Malone Méndez