Highbridge and Nabr Plan 105 Homes in Oakland’s Fruitvale

Highbridge Equity Partners and Nabr aim to build more than 100 homes in Oakland’s Fruitvale next to a growing arts district.

The Oakland-based Highbridge and New York-based Nabr have filed preliminary plans to build a 105-unit complex at 1026 Cotton Street, the San Francisco Business Times reported. It would replace a former restaurant building.

The 1-acre project just west of I-880 would include condominiums or apartments anchored by a 140,000-square-foot future arts collective known as The Loom.

Early plans call for three six-story residential towers built atop a podium base, with parking on the ground floor and underground for 105 cars. It would include studios, one-, two- and three-bedroom units, and an unspecified number of ground-floor shops and restaurants.

Project plans did not specify whether those units would be apartments or condominiums.

The company hopes to be among the first developers to help turn 5 acres in Fruitvale’s Jingletown into the premier arts district in the Bay Area, Highbridge Equity General Partner Douglas Abrams told the Business Times.

The project would be anchored by The Loom, a roughly 140,000-square-foot warehouse Highbridge acquired in 2019 for an undisclosed price.

The building has become an artists collective, with seven artists operating out of the building. Plans call for as many as 50 artists, Abrams said.

“The idea is the Loom would become The Loom District — to create the Wynwood, in Miami, of the San Francisco community,” Abrams said, nodding to a formerly industrial part of Miami that has been remade into an arts and entertainment district. The Bay Area, he said, is missing a place like that, and Highbridge thinks its piece of Jingletown could create it.

The developer has paid nearly $24 million over the past three years to acquire 1026 Cotton Street and two other parcels at 2150 Livingston Street and 920 22nd Avenue, which make up a combined 5.2 acres.

Abrams said the Jingletown project would expand to have housing, entertainment and a theater, becoming a new neighborhood with a European feel.

Highbridge has been one of Oakland’s most prolific investors over the past decade. Between 2016 and 2019, it spent more than $100 million on office buildings, including the iconic Tribune Tower and YWCA Building.

Brooklyn-based Nabr, a “direct-to-consumer real estate startup,” bought its first project in San Jose last year, and began offering 4 percent of the units in its first phase through a lease-to-own program.

— Dana Bartholomew