The Metropolis of Berkeley goes tall in its newest effort to resolve a extreme scarcity of scholar housing at UC Berkeley.
The Berkeley Metropolis Council voted unanimously this month to permit buildings as excessive as 12 tales within the densely populated Southside neighborhood adjoining to the college campus. The rezoning measure encompasses practically 30 metropolis blocks south of the UC Berkeley campus, in line with a report within the San Francisco Chronicle.
Berkeley officers estimate that stress-free the peak restriction within the space might allow one other 2,652 houses to be constructed within the neighborhood bounded by Bancroft Manner, Prospect Road, Dwight Manner and Fulton Road.
In a area with a proliferation of historic buildings, the zoning adjustment will permit constructing heights to rise by 85 ft on streets together with Telegraph Avenue, Bancroft Manner and Durant Avenue, amongst others.
If builders embrace each reasonably priced housing and middle-income housing, they might be eligible beneath AB1287, a brand new state density regulation not too long ago signed by the governor, to rise as excessive as 16 tales. AB1287 goes into impact subsequent yr.
The Metropolis Council’s vote additionally directed the town supervisor to contemplate incentives for brand spanking new housing initiatives that may permit for widened sidewalks, activated pedestrian areas and inexperienced roofs, the report stated.
Atlanta-based developer Niles Bolton Associates filed plans earlier this month to switch storefronts at 2450 and 2480 Shattuck Avenue in downtown Berkeley with an eight-story, 111-unit condominium advanced.
Plans name for the demolition of two industrial buildings on the website, together with a Thai restaurant, a laundromat and a bicycle store. The brand new condominium constructing will embrace 2K SF of ground-floor photographs, a rooftop terrace and parking for 78 bicycles.
The housing crunch at UC Berkeley is so unhealthy a choose final yr ordered the college to carry again acceptances for hundreds of scholars due to the dearth of housing, forcing an intervention from the state Legislature.
UC Berkeley supplies housing for less than 23% of its scholar, the bottom charge of any College of California campus, the Chronicle report stated.
A invoice handed by the state Legislature and signed into regulation by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September nullified authorized challenges to UC Berkeley’s controversial plan to construct scholar housing on a website that features the counter-culture landmark often called the Individuals’s Park since 1968.
In February, a state appeals courtroom dominated that the challenge, which plans to construct housing with 1,100 scholar beds, couldn’t transfer ahead as a result of the rise in residential noise might be thought of a type of air pollution beneath the CEQA.
In a unanimous vote, the Legislature laid out in its invoice that residential noise just isn’t thought of a big environmental impact beneath CEQA. The invoice, signed into regulation by Newsom, additionally specifies that public universities is not going to must weigh different areas for housing initiatives so long as the candidate website is 5 acres or much less and has already been included within the college’s most up-to-date environmental affect report.
