Downtown Oakland housing highrise could be city’s tallest tower
OAKLAND — A highrise with hundreds of homes and some office space is being proposed for a downtown Oakland site, a project that would become one of the East Bay city’s tallest towers if it’s built.
The mixed-use development would feature 425 rental units and a few floors of office space on the lower floors of the project, proposed for 2044 Franklin Street, which is a short distance from the 19th Street BART station in Oakland.
Preliminary plans for the tower, along with some images for the proposed project, were filed by the project’s developer with the Oakland city planning department, which posted the proposal on a municipal public website.
The 39-story tower would soar 440 feet. If built right now, it would be higher than the current tallest tower in Oakland, the Ordway building, which is 404 feet tall.
Two tower proposals that are in the works in Oakland, though, would be taller than either the Ordway or the 2044 Franklin Street building. These other projects, however, have yet to begin construction.
The mixed-use housing and office highrise at 2044 Franklin Street is the latest of multiple proposals that developers have pitched for the property, which would rise at the corner of Franklin Street and 21st Street.
An early version of the project envisioned a 40-story tower at the site. About a year later, in 2017, a 29-story tower with 184 housing units was proposed at the 2044 Franklin property. In 2018, plans were floated for a 22-story tower.
R2 Building, a real estate firm, is the developer that has proposed the latest version of the project that features a 39-story tower.
The new project also includes 134,000 square feet of office space consisting of five floors of offices on the lower levels of the structure, according to the plans on file with the city website.
R2 Building intends to use SB 330 vesting rights that would enable a streamlined approval process for the project, as a way to address the housing shortages in Oakland and the Bay Area generally.
The development site was last bought in 2016 in a $14.3 million deal, Alameda County property records show.
The property at present is occupied by an office building that was constructed in 1965 and totals 25,500 square feet. The developer intends to bulldoze the existing building to clear the way for the new tower.
The preliminary proposal is being floated at Oakland City Hall to gauge the reaction of municipal staffers, local politicians and nearby communities. A construction timeline has yet to emerge.