Affordable housing could replace long-shuttered Oakland parking garage

City council is set to vote on the future of the site at its March 15 meeting

Oakland Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan (City of Oakland, Google Maps)
Oakland Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan (City of Oakland, Google Maps)

Affordable housing could replace an Oakland parking garage that has been shuttered since 2016.

The Oakland city council is scheduled to vote on whether to authorize a notice of development opportunity for the site on March 15, the San Francisco Business Times reported. Councilmembers Rebecca Kaplan and Carroll Fife co-authored the proposal.

The notice would allow the city to solicit proposals from developers for a 100 percent affordable housing project on the 0.9-acre site at 1414 Clay Street, adjacent to Oakland City Hall. The city closed the 335-spot Clay Street garage citing concern about seismic safety.

Kaplan said the notice won’t say how many residential units would have to be built on the site. She’d like to see as many as possible.

“We want to let different applicants tell us how many units they can pull off,” Kaplan told the newspaper. “It is an opportunity to mobilize more affordable housing, which is desperately needed, and to help show our commitment to affordable housing.”

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The city council voted unanimously to authorize a NODO for the city’s police administration building at 455 Seventh Street in February. Developers interested in the land will have to create at least 600 residential units and market at least a third of them as affordable.

A setback to meeting affordable housing goals in the city came last week when the city council voted against granting a sixth extension to the development team that struggled to secure financing for the 361-unit LakeHouse Commons project near Lake Merritt.

Oakland has overproduced market-rate housing over the past seven years and hasn’t built enough affordable housing to meet its goals set by the Regional Housing Needs Allocation, according to Kaplan.

[SFBT] — Victoria Pruitt