1,800-unit housing project planned<\/a> in San Francisco\u2019s Fillmore District, where a Safeway store already shuttered earlier this year for reasons unrelated to the project, and a replacement grocery anchor has not yet been determined.<\/p>\nBut Align, which is working with an undisclosed nonprofit on the Oakland plan, confirmed that the Trader Joe\u2019s store \u2014 long a neighborhood mainstay \u2014 would shutter permanently once construction starts and won\u2019t be replaced with a different grocer. That Trader Joe\u2019s location was known for being the first in the country where workers successfully unionized, in 2022, a precursor of organizing efforts across the chain, which operates hundreds of stores nationwide.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
As of this week, no closing date for the grocer has been provided, though a person with insight into the project\u2019s development timeline said Trader Joe\u2019s would likely remain open for several years, unless the grocer decides to shutter sooner. Because a nonprofit will be operating the planned retirement community, maintaining a commercial lease with Trader Joe\u2019s would create \u201ccomplexities,\u201d the individual said.<\/p>\n
Trader Joe\u2019s did not respond to a request for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The nearest full-service grocery alternative would be a Safeway half a mile north of the project site, followed by a Whole Foods Market about two miles south on Telegraph Avenue and Berkeley Bowl West in West Berkeley to the north. Oakland has just one other Trader Joe\u2019s store near Lake Merritt, though there are three additional locations in neighboring Berkeley, Emeryville and El Cerrito.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The loss of the College Avenue Trader Joe\u2019s would be offset by new housing designed to support seniors aging in place. The project would include 371 independent living residences, along with 18 assisted living units and 26 memory care rooms. About 70% of the planned community\u2019s residents are expected from Oakland and East Bay neighborhoods, and Align said it expects demand for senior housing in the area to outpace supply in the coming years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Align said that its nonprofit partner \u2014 which it declined to share, but described as a \u201cleading Bay Area nonprofit senior living organization with more than 65 years of experience serving older adults\u201d \u2014 is recognized for its robust wellness, educational and cultural programming and emphasizes keeping residents engaged in their communities through volunteer opportunities and other civic and enrichment programs.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
The project is expected to create 200 permanent jobs in healthcare, hospitality, administration and facilities management, as well as hundreds of union construction jobs, the developer said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis project is about helping seniors stay in the neighborhoods they call home,\u201d said David Balducci of Align Real Estate. \u201cBy placing senior housing near transit, services and shops, we\u2019re giving older adults the opportunity to age in place with dignity and independence, while also freeing up family homes for the next generation. In turn, this will reduce pressure on families and the healthcare system while strengthening the long-term vitality of the Rockridge corridor.\u201d<\/p>\n
The College Avenue site was identified as a housing \u201copportunity site\u201d in Oakland\u2019s current housing element, which is a required general plan laying out how cities and counties in the state will meet their housing goals. The developer is planning to build the two-tower project using various state laws meant to unlock and accelerate denser housing construction, including the State Density Bonus Law and Assembly Bill 130, which exempts qualifying projects from a lengthy environmental review process.<\/p>\n
In San Francisco, Align\u2019s push to transform aging Safeways into housing has been both celebrated as a bold response to the city\u2019s housing crisis and rejected as an overreach into neighborhoods concerned with affordability, neighborhood character and scale \u2014 depending on whom you ask. The split was evident late last year, when the firm proposed a 25-story, roughly 790-unit to replace a longstanding Safeway in the upscale Marina District. That tower \u2014 while initially intended to be much taller \u2014 drew immediate criticism from neighbors, the area\u2019s supervisor and Mayor Daniel Lurie.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The proposal quickly became a flashpoint in San Francisco\u2019s broader housing debate, highlighting the tension between the state goals of adding density to meet the city\u2019s pressing housing needs and entrenched resistance to taller development in some neighborhoods. The developer has also put forth proposals to develop Safeway properties in Bernal Heights, the Outer Richmond and the Fillmore where the proposal calls for twice as many units as the Marina plan.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
The Oakland proposal echoes dynamics seen in San Francisco\u2019s Marina District. Both Rockridge and the Marina rank among the highest-income neighborhoods in their respective cities and have historically seen little high-density development.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Oakland\u2019s neighborhoods, however, are not unfamiliar with denser development near transit, with projects such as the 24-story Skyline tower near MacArthur BART completed in recent years and others, like the long planned Mandela Station development, which includes a 31-story residential tower, moving toward construction and another transit-oriented development featuring two high-rises shaping up at the Lake Merritt BART Station.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A one-story Trader Joe\u2019s store and its sprawling parking lot could become a pair of towers that would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[184,7,3010,1335,332,143,145,144,388],"class_list":["post-280519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-bay-area","tag-california","tag-commercial-real-estate","tag-development","tag-east-bay","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-real-estate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}