Panoramic Interests is looking to add to the growing number of school sites in the Bay Area being considered for housing construction.
The San Francisco-based firm filed permits for a residential redevelopment at 1130 Oxford Street in Berkeley with plans to replace a school campus formerly owned by the Berkeley Unified School District with houses, San Francisco YIMBY reported.
The plan calls for 32 homes spanning an average of 1,500 square feet. Each home would rise three stories and have a single-care garage.
Panoramic Interests’ application seeks the use of Senate Bill 330 to streamline the approval process as well as Senate Bill 1123 for ministerial approval of a master-planned starter home project.
The three-story school was built in 1965 and remodeled three decades ago. Oxford Elementary School started occupying the property in 1911 but relocated in 2020.
Municipalities in the Bay Area and beyond have looked to redevelopment of underused school sites to add units to their local housing stock.
In San Jose, Alum Rock Union Elementary School District is planning a 78-unit workforce housing project on district-owned land at 2050 Kammerer Avenue. The development would be reserved entirely for Alum Rock Union Elementary School District teachers and staff, with half set aside for lower-income households and the rest offered at below-market-rate rents. The district is planning to erect another 288-unit workforce housing complex at 760 Hillsdale Avenue, on vacant land next to the district’s Silicon Valley Education Campus. And at 5670 Camden Avenue in San Jose, Mana Investments has filed plans to build 108 condominium units on Little League fields next to a school.
The trend has bled south to the Los Angeles area. Storm Properties is pursuing the construction of 104 townhomes at the former Florence Flanner School in Baldwin Park. The proposed development is currently in the environmental review stage and calls for the residences to be built on a Bassett Unified School District-owned site at 1314 Le Borgne Avenue.
The City of Berkeley is required to plan for 8,934 new housing units by 2031 as part of its state-mandated housing targets.
— Chris Malone Méndez
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