Riaz Capital plans 158 workforce apartments in Oakland

An Oakland developer that wants to build elsewhere because of rising city crime and homelessness has filed plans to build 158 apartments near Downtown.

Riaz Capital has filed plans to construct a seven-story apartment complex 3801 Telegraph Avenue in Mosswood, the San Jose Mercury News reported. It would replace a commercial building now home to a popular Korean restaurant.

The company is running out its 1,700-unit development pipeline around Oakland after its owner, Riaz Taplin, said last month he would look beyond the city to develop workforce housing.

Riaz Capital paid $3.7 million to buy the 0.3-acre property in December, home to Seoul Gom Tang, a Korean restaurant.

Plans call for a 1580-unit building with a ground-floor gym, leasing office, package concierge and 1,850 square feet of shops and restaurants. It would have a common lounge and rooftop terrace on the seventh floor, with views of San Francisco Bay.

The gray-and-charcoal apartments, designed by Left Coast Architecture of Lafayette, would include efficiency studios and two-bedroom units, ranging from 327 square feet to 578 square feet.

Riaz Capital builds mostly studio and efficiency one-bedroom apartments designed to serve the “missing middle,” young professionals who may not qualify for affordable housing but have a tough time paying market rates. Rents range from the high $1,000s up to the mid-$2,000s.

Riaz has proposed apartment projects in Downtown Oakland’s Jack London Square. They include an apartment conversion of the Z Hotel at 233 Broadway, with 102 residential units, plus plans filed in July to build a 210-unit apartment complex at 200-220 Alice Street, with 2,600 square feet of ground-floor shops and restaurants.

At the same time, the Oakland-based builder is looking beyond city limits to develop moderately priced homes, citing frustration with the city as the reason for seeking new markets.

Concerns about cleanliness and public safety have for the first time compelled the company to venture into neighboring Berkeley with a plan to build more than 300 affordable-by-design homes.

“We’ve been working in Oakland since 1998, and it’s worse than it was then.

It’s just sad,” Riaz Taplin, CEO of the company, told the San Francisco Business Times earlier this month. “So I look at doing business in other places.”

The two development sites in Berkeley include 2310 Ellsworth Street, where Riaz Capital plans to build 124 apartments, and 3030 Telegraph Avenue, where it plans to construct 174 apartments, according to the Mercury News.

Riaz Taplin, whose 45-year-old company has grown roots in the East Bay city, joined Oakland business leaders last month to demand the city work to revive a dead downtown – where crime is up, homelessness has gotten worse since the pandemic and offices are a third vacant.

He and more than 1,000 business leaders declared a call to action, demanding Oakland fully reopen City Hall and enforce its encampment management plan.

Riaz Capital was founded in 1977 by Taplin’s father, Russ Taplin, who once slept overnight outside of San Francisco’s City Hall to snag condo conversion permits. Then the Loma Prieta earthquake struck in 1989, hammering business.

The company moved to Oakland, where it’s now one of its most active developers. It just finished a 64-unit apartment complex in West Oakland that’s more than half leased.

But two more Riaz projects are not leased up, Taplin said, because of the presence of a nearby homeless encampment. And two of his tenants were shot last year.

Hence the company is looking to Berkeley and beyond to build homes, he said. “That’s what the whole Berkeley thing is about — a better quality of life for my customer.”

— Dana Bartholomew

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