The owner of a small medical office south of UC Berkeley wants to replace it with a 63-unit apartment complex in a newly rezoned part of the East Bay city.
Studio KDA Architects has filed plans on behalf of landlord Srihari Vegesna to construct the seven-story building at 2372 Ellsworth Street in Berkeley, two blocks from campus, the San Francisco Business Times reported. It would replace a single-story medical building.
Plans call for a 50,000-square-foot building with studio, two-, three- and four-bedroom units. The complex would have a gray and white exterior, divided by a mustard strip, according to a rendering. It would feature two banks of exterior balconies, and awnings on one side.
Zone changes in November have drawn developers to the area south of campus, which now allows buildings up to 12 stories to help meet a housing shortage for students and faculty.
In August, Yes Duffy Architects Rhodes Planning Group filed preliminary plans to build a 20-story, 117-unit apartment tower at 2425 Durant Avenue, two blocks from the Ellsworth project.
The tower would destroy three historic Victorian homes at 2421, 2425 and 2427 Durant Avenue. They include the Street House, built in 1889, and the Laura Tull Flats, built in 1905, according to the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association.
The houses, since cut up into apartments, were once the reputed home of Mario Savio, head of Berkeley’s free speech movement in the 1960s.
The project pushed past the city’s extension to 12 stories with the help of a new state density bonus law, AB 1287. If built, it would be the tallest building in Berkeley’s South Side neighborhood.
Rhode Island-based Gilbane also used the law to exceed local zoning codes for its 478-bed, 23-story apartment proposal at 2115 Kittredge Street.
New pro-housing laws from the state and local zoning code changes have made room for taller buildings and higher density in Berkeley, where they were once a rarity, according to the Business Times.
Berkeley’s City Council changed zoning codes last year in the South Side neighborhood, bound by Bancroft Way, Fulton Street, Dwight Way and Piedmont Avenue, to increase building height and ease some open space requirements.
The move nearly doubled the development potential of the area, allowing for an additional 2,652 homes.
— Dana Bartholomew
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