Oxford Capital Upsizes Apartment-Hotel Project in Palo Alto

Oxford Capital Group wants to boost the size of a controversial redevelopment of the Creekside Inn in Palo Alto.

The Chicago-based developer has filed revised plans for two eight-story buildings with 228 apartments plus a 132-room hotel at 3400 El Camino Real, Palo Alto Online reported. The former plan included two six-story buildings with 189 apartments.

The mixed-use project would redevelop the 136-room Creekside Inn, built in 1968 at El Camino Real and Matadero Avenue.

Oxford now seeks to build two 85-foot apartment buildings on either side of Matadero Creek, with a combined 228 apartments. Of those 46 would be set aside as affordable for low-income households.

The developer plans to raze four two-story hotel buildings that flank the creek and build a new seven-story hotel with 132 rooms on the east side of the property. It would preserve two buildings with 57 rooms, bringing the total number of hotel rooms to 189.

The project also includes 14 townhomes, including a four-unit townhouse on the southeast corner plus 10 units in an existing hotel building.

In December 2020, Oxford Capital paid $111 million for five Bay Area hotels, including the Creekside Inn in Palo Alto, a Los Gatos hotel and three hotels in San Francisco, according to the Mercury News.

An Oxford affiliate paid $32.7 million for Creekside Inn, which includes older low-slung hotel buildings and a restaurant.

In July 2022, the developer filed plans to replace the Creekside Inn with a 382-unit apartment complex on both sides of a park-like creek.

Last summer, Oxford filed a builder’s remedy application, with a revised plan to build 189 apartments and a 200-room hotel, which included a new hotel and three renovated hotel buildings, according to the Mercury News.

The builder’s remedy is a loophole in state housing law that allows developers to streamline project approvals in cities and counties such as Palo Alto that have failed to certify their state housing plans, if at least 20 percent of a project’s units are affordable.

But the earlier plans were scrapped after pushback by the City Council and neighbors about the size and scale of the building, its potential effect on the creek and the loss of Driftwood Deli.

Since then, however, developers such as Oxford have been emboldened by state laws and Palo Alto’s failure to get the state Department of Housing and Community Development to approve its housing element blueprint for 6,086 new homes by 2031.

Other builders, including Acclaim Companies and Vittoria Management, have also proposed builder’s remedy projects with more than 300 apartments along El Camino, in the Ventura and Barron Park neighborhoods.

— Dana Bartholomew