Hines moving forward on tallest high-rise in the East Bay

Plans for a 622-foot building is its latest Bay Area investment

Hines' Jeffrey Hines and Laura Hines; rendering of 415-E. 20th Street, Oakland (Hines, Getty)
Hines' Jeffrey Hines and Laura Hines; rendering of 415-E. 20th Street, Oakland (Hines, Getty)

A Houston, Texas developer has high hopes for the East Bay.

Hines has filed demolition permits to raze a four-story office building at 415 E. 20th St. in Oakland to make way for a 39-story, mixed-use highrise, SFYimby reported. When completed, it would be the tallest skyscraper in the East Bay.

Plans call for a 622-foot tall building with more than 1 millions square feet of space and a garage for 262 cars. Nearly 1,300 square feet would be devoted to ground-floor shops and restaurants.

The tower would replace a nearly 83,000-square-foot building that’s occupied by Oakland Scientific, which hosts space for Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. The 1-acre property was last owned by UC Regents.

Architectural firm Pickard Chilton has been tapped for the project’s design.

The proposed silver-gray glass building would feature 15 silver metal columns running up the sides, with X-braces covering each wall, broken up by protruding window mullions.

A two-story cut-out would top a roughly 6-story podium, serving as an open-air, landscaped deck. Atop the building, a roof-top deck landscaped with trees would be wrapped with a three-story tall glass windbreak.

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Kendall Heaton Associates, based in Houston, is the architect of record. OJB Landscape, based in Solana Beach, will landscape the patio decks and the sidewalk below.

If open to the public, it would offer the highest observation deck in the Bay Area, assuming the Salesforce Tower remains closed.

The 20th Street project was approved by the city’s Planning Commission in May of last year. It’s less than a block from the 19th Street Oakland BART station and three blocks from Lake Merritt.

Construction is expected to take 32 months. But it’s not clear when Hines, pending approvals, intends to break ground.

It would have a high-rise neighbor, as well. The Behring Company is building a 39-story residential tower at 1900 Broadway, on the same block.

Hines is heavily invested in the Bay Area and has moved forward on a 681-unit Transbay development in San Francisco’s South of Market. It’s also building a 266,000-square-foot industrial complex in Fremont.

– Dana Bartholomew

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