Team Projects Gets OK for Fast-Tracked Oakland Apartments

Bay Area developer Team Projects just turned a modest infill plan into one of Oakland’s fastest-moving apartment approvals while increasing the size of the development nearly tenfold.

Oakland city planners signed off on Team Projects’ nine-story project at 2222 Carroll Street in Ivy Hill using the city’s S-14 zoning overlay, which fast-tracks housing approvals for projects that meet certain standards, the San Francisco Business Times reported. The project’s housing capacity has been beefed up from nine units to 84.

The project was first introduced in 2021 and called for nine units on the 0.1-acre site; the number doubled to 18 in 2023. Earlier this year, Team Projects principal Zachary Heineman, the applicant on the project, was able to increase it to 84 units using the state’s density bonus.

The firm chose to increase the number of units to improve the financial feasibility of the project in response to state density bonus legislation, Heineman told the outlet.

To comply with the incentive, the development will include 17 units of affordable housing, seven for very-low-income households and 10 for moderate-income households. Team Projects hopes to break ground next year.

It will partially use modular construction, assembling prebuilt bathrooms and some other prefabricated elements to keep as much construction off-site as possible.

“The goal is to minimize time on site and leverage factory conditions where workers are safer,” Heineman said. “Our goal is to systematize this scale of construction, so ideally we can do more projects.”

The development previously secured by-right approval this fall using S-13 and S-14 zoning designations. S-13 helps developers build affordable housing by permitting taller buildings and eliminating some regulations and limits on the number of housing units allowed. Oakland’s S-14 designation, implemented in 2023, allows streamlined approvals for projects that meet certain standards and minimum density requirements.

Earlier this year, Related California and East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation scored approvals for a 192-unit complex in Oakland’s Jack London Square using the S-14 zoning overlay.

— Chris Malone Méndez