Berkeley’s “Little Secret”: New Housing Construction Downtown

An August post on Curbed SF highlighted the fact that the sassy San Francisco real-estate site rarely writes anything about Berkeley.

Why not? “Well people, ’cause Berkeley builds squat, that’s why,” was the curt explanation provided, thus making it clear that “only the new would do” for the San Francisco-centric editors.

Do an archive search for “Berkeley” on Curbed, and you will find dozens of results, however — but they all fall into two neat categories: eating and tree-hugging. Well. Nothing new there then.

But there is new residential construction slated for Berkeley, as I reported back in July. The Charles Hotel/conference complex, to be located downtown, on Center Street, will include about 50 residential units.

And now, as Curbed acknowledges, there is the advent of Arpeggio (pictured above), a mixed-use development to comprise 143 condos, as well as new rehearsal space for the Berkeley Repertory Theater. (Arpeggio: “the playing of the notes of a chord in quick succession instead of simultaneously” — don’t you love the names they choose for new-builds?).

Arpeggio will rise up nine stories, an anomaly in a city which to date has placed height restrictions on new developments, and will also be sited on Center Street.

A report in San Francisco Business Times suggests this is just the tip of the iceberg. Berkeley is apparently pushing for more mixed-used development near public transportation to encourage people to get out of their cars:

“The Arpeggio project will fit right in for the future vision of our downtown,” said Debra Sanderson, the city’s land use planning manager. “It’s sort of a little secret that (there’s) been all this housing construction in Berkeley. We’ve had more projects approved in the last five years than we had approved in the previous 50.”

It looks like Curbed SF may have to strain its neck to look eastwards more often in future — CurbedBerkeley anyone?

[Photo credit of Arpeggio: Curbed SF.]