Hoteliers Look to Convert Oakland Marriott Into Apartments

Hotel or housing — that’s the question for one Downtown Oakland property.

Core Capital and Gaw Capital have filed paperwork with the City of Oakland to convert the Oakland Courtyard by Marriott at 988 Broadway into an apartment complex, the San Francisco Business Times reported. The completed project would have 64 units on five floors.

It would have seven affordable units reserved for tenants making 50 to 80 percent of area median income. That qualifies the project for SB 330, which guarantees zoning at the time of application and limits public input, according to the Business Times.

The property, near the border of Chinatown and Old Oakland, was once proposed for conversion into transitional housing for unhoused residents.

The nonprofit Cardea Health sought to acquire the property and redevelop it into a 150-bed shelter offering medical care, positioning the project as a model for combining housing and health services. However, the plan met resistance from nearby residents and local officials concerned about neighborhood impacts and the concentration of social services downtown. Cardea withdrew from the deal in July, leaving the building’s future uncertain and highlighting the political and logistical challenges of adaptive reuse in urban cores.

Since the pandemic, Alameda County’s hospitality sector has undergone a dramatic transformation, with an estimated 1,200 hotel rooms either shuttered or converted into supportive housing, reflecting both the depth of the region’s housing crisis and the sustained weakness in its lodging market. In the East Bay, declining tourism and convention activity have made hotel conversions increasingly common, with 988 Broadway as the latest example.

The property is located just one block from the Oakland Marriott City Center, which was owned by Hong Kong-based Gaw Capital, until a foreclosure and auction sale in 2025. The price of $70.2 million, or roughly $140,400 per room, amounted to less than half its 2017 sale price of $143 million. Irvine-based Core Capital held a minority stake in the hotel.

The transaction represented a 51 percent decline in value for Gaw, run by Chair Goodwin Gaw, and is emblematic of how pandemic-era disruptions and slow recovery in business travel have eroded asset valuations in the market.

In a letter to the Oakland Planning & Building Department, attorneys for Core Capital and Gaw Capital said there are no plans to expand the existing building. The redevelopment would include exterior upgrades to the building’s appearance and new amenities such as a fitness center, bike parking and ground floor retail.

– Joel Russell