Yes Duffy Architects’ Berkeley Apartments Face Appeals

Local labor groups are fighting the City of Berkeley’s approval of what would be the tallest residential tower in the Southside neighborhood.

The Building and Construction Trades of Alameda County and the Northern California Carpenters Regional Council have appealed the city’s approvals for a 20-story, 169-unit project at 2425 Durant Avenue, the San Francisco Business Times reported. The unions argue that Yes Duffy Architects improperly sidestepped recently enacted municipal laws in proposing the new, student-oriented housing.

The groups are targeting exemptions from Berkeley’s Helping Achieve Responsible Development with Healthcare and Apprenticeship Training Standards (HARD HATS) ordinance as well as the Southside prevailing wage requirement, both of which took effect this year. The unions say the city allowing Yes Duffy to avoid providing healthcare and apprenticeships for its workers and to not pay the general prevailing wage were a “misuse” of the laws.

“The trades council and Carpenters have never encountered such concession requests before and are not aware of any project that has received similar concessions from the city (or any city),” Jolene Kramer, legal counsel for the unions, said in a letter to the city.

In response, Mark Rhoades, a consultant working on the project, said the construction labor requirements would add “millions of dollars” to the overall project costs. Total labor costs alone would purportedly increase around 20 to 25 percent.

“It’s another attempt by the unions to create positions for themselves that make housing a lot more expensive to build, particularly in Berkeley, where the fees are the highest in the state,” Rhoades said.

When the HARD HATS ordinance was introduced in 2023, many developers balked at the law and the costs that it would tack on to many projects. As a result, City Hall was flooded with preliminary applications under SB 330 to lock in earlier, less restrictive zoning standards. The Southside prevailing wage requirements went into effect early last year after the City Council’s upzoning of the Southside neighborhood.

The 2425 Durant Avenue project will go before the Berkeley City Council in February when council members will vote on whether to reject or accept the unions’ appeal. The City Council already rejected an attempt to designate the site, currently hosting a Victorian home and two other residential buildings dating back more than a century, as a historic landmark earlier this year.

Yes Duffy Architects plans to start construction in January 2028 once design and building permits are secured.

— Chris Malone Méndez