The plan, to be detailed tonight at a city planning commission meeting, calls for 575 apartment units in a four-story building that will sit between the elevated I-680 freeway and the elevated BART line. About 515 units will be market rate, which is about $2.30 per sf per month. The remainder of the units, about 60, will be more affordable. The unit mix would be about 70% studio and one-bedroom units, a source at BRE Properties tells GlobeSt.com. The retail space would total about 30,000 sf.
City approval is expected sometime during the latter half of 2006. The plan is in line with the city's goal of adding 1,700 new housing units near mass transit between 1999 and 2007. Not including this project, about half those units have been completed or are under construction.
At issue is whether development plans for the west half of the site should be developed in conjunction with plans for the available land east of the BART station. Since BRE's partners have the development rights for both sides of the station, city planning staff wants to see a comprehensive plan for the entire site.
City planner Scott Harriman, who drafted the city staff report on the proposal, tells GlobeSt.com that BRE has since said it avoided the east side of the station because it assumed it could not block the view corridor from the Bart Station to Mount Diablo, which is depicted in the city's general plan.
Harriman says that while the views of Mount Diablo are spectacular when on the train coming into the city, they are already partially obstructed when at the terminal itself. Harriman thinks a better plan might be to create a better public viewpoint as part of the development of the eastern half of the site.
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