Oakland Private School Makes Plans for Historic Building

A landmark property on Lake Merritt, once slated to become Oakland’s answer to the Battery, may instead end up filled with middle schoolers and robotics labs.

The Julia Morgan School for Girls is exploring a move into the former Bellevue Club building at 525 Bellevue Avenue, the San Francisco Business Times reported, citing zoning documents filed with the city by Gensler. The private school is proposing renovations and code updates to convert the six-story, 40,000-square-foot Beaux-Arts property into a campus for its 75 students.

The filing marks another turn for the 1929 building, which opened as the Women’s Athletic Club of Alameda County before later operating as the Bellevue Club, a private social and athletic club overlooking Lake Merritt.

Tech millionaire couple Michael and Xochi Birch, founders of San Francisco social club The Battery, bought the property for nearly $10 million in 2021 with plans for a members-only social club. Those ambitions fizzled, and the owners put the site up for sale last year.

The Julia Morgan School, a middle school, currently leases space at Northeastern University’s Mills College campus at 5000 MacArthur Boulevard. Boston-based Northeastern acquired Mills College in 2021 and has been reshaping the campus, including closing the nearly century-old Mills College Children’s School last year.

The Julia Morgan School’s lease expires in 2029.

Plans filed with the city show the Bellevue building would undergo a significant interior overhaul. Gensler proposed converting former guest rooms into classrooms, transforming the kitchen and bar into a lab for science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics, and repurposing lower-level space for robotics or woodshop classes.

The property’s indoor pool could also get a retractable floor, allowing it to double as a gymnasium. The building in its current shape includes 18 guest rooms, saunas, a dining room, lounge and structured parking.

The potential deal would be the latest to showcase how Oakland’s battered commercial real estate market is creating opportunities for schools to scoop up discounted space.

Last year, Envision Academy of Arts & Technology bought its 64,400-square-foot home at 1515 Webster Street for $22.5 million. Oakland School for the Arts is under contract for the Dufwin Theater in Uptown, which will add more classroom space for the school when the deal is expected to close this summer.

— Chris Malone Méndez