Senior Housing Coming to Oakland Grocery Store Site

Align Real Estate is growing its grocery-to-housing playbook across the Bay from San Francisco.

On Wednesday, the San Francisco-based developer filed an application Wednesday to build a pair of high-rise senior housing towers at 5727 College Avenue in Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood, the San Francisco Business Times reported.

The proposal calls for replacing an existing retail center anchored by a Trader Joe’s with 415 units of housing geared toward senior citizens across 31- and 25-story buildings on a 1.5-acre site near the Rockridge BART station. Of the 415 residences, 371 would be independent units, 18 would be for assisted living and 26 would be dedicated to memory care. Align is partnering with an undisclosed nonprofit operator, which would run the facility and its services.

While Align’s plans in San Francisco have included the redevelopment of several Safeway stores with additional housing, the development firm isn’t planning to replace the Trader Joe’s with another grocery store, despite the site being owned by Safeway parent company Albertsons. Coincidentally, the College Avenue site is near two Safeway stores that underwent renovations and expansions in recent years. The Trader Joe’s is expected to remain open for several years before ultimately shutting down.

Align is pursuing the development under a suite of state housing laws designed to boost density and sidestep local hurdles, including California’s density bonus program and Assembly Bill 130, which can exempt qualifying projects from environmental review. That strategy could prove critical in a neighborhood where large-scale development has historically faced resistance and where the city has faced lagging housing production.

Safeway’s parent company has become a key player in Align’s growing pipeline in the Bay Area. The duo has already unveiled plans for roughly 3,900 units across multiple Bay Area sites, largely on underutilized grocery properties. The Rockridge project would push that total past 4,300 units.

In addition to plans for mixed-use redevelopments with Safeway components in San Francisco’s Marina District, Fillmore, Bernal Heights and Outer Richmond neighborhoods, Align has already moved toward bringing that strategy across the Bay. Last month, the developer filed plans to build 396 residential units on a 3-acre site in San Mateo, which would demolish the existing Safeway store and replace it with a seven-story building with housing above a larger Safeway on the ground floor.

— Chris Malone Méndez