City Ventures to build nearly 70 homes in NorCal’s Fremont

An Irvine developer has set its sights on building 69 homes on a site shunned by SummerHill in the Bay Area.

City Ventures has filed plans to build 60 townhomes and nine accessory dwelling units on a two-acre site at 37447 Fremont Boulevard, in Fremont, the San Francisco Business Times reported. It wants to demolish several commercial buildings at the site.

In 2019, SummerHill Apartment Communities filed plans to redevelop the three-parcel property into more than 200 apartments.

But after the San Ramon-based developer walked away from the South Bay city site north of San Jose in early 2020, City Ventures targeted the property for its own project in the spring of last year.

The property is owned by Salwa Aboumrad. It’s not clear if City Ventures has inked a deal to buy it.

Plans call for a solar-powered, all-electric development, which have become standard for City Ventures projects.

The developer has been active in the Bay Area, having moved ahead with a 90-unit condominium project in West Oakland and in the last few weeks acquiring a pair of approved development sites in Oakland and Richmond.

City Ventures continues to seek out development opportunities in Northern California, despite a challenging time for homebuilders, Phil Kerr, its CEO of homebuilding, said in May.

“Oakland and San Francisco — they’re great places, long term,” Kerr told the Business Times.

“They are the areas that people will continue to need housing in, and there’s a giant shortage.”

The developer has especially ambitious plans in Concord, where it’s now vying to develop up to 16,000 homes at the 2,275-acre former Concord Naval Weapons Station. The housing project, the largest in the Bay Area, would provide homes and millions of square feet of schools, offices, shops and restaurants.

Last summer, City Ventures got the go-ahead to build 60 townhomes in the Southern California municipality of Compton, with 10 of the homes reserved for sale to moderate-income households.