A developer focused on projects in Berkeley pitched a 10-story building with more than 200 apartments a block from another site it aims to turn into housing.
Berkeley’s NX Ventures filed early plans to the city on Feb. 24 for a 221-unit building with room for shops and restaurants at 2920 Shattuck Avenue, according to the San Francisco Business Times. The project involves demolishing an auto shop and hardware store on the NX-owned site, the newspaper said. It has more than twice as many units as a previous one the company pitched in 2020 that was tied to a project with hotel rooms and rental units.
NX has hit pause on that nearby project and is now treating its Shattuck Avenue plans separately, co-founder Nathan George told the Business Times. Changes to the state’s density bonus law allowed the company to increase its unit count from 90, he said. It’s a block away from a gas station that NX wants to redevelop into a building with 156 apartments and ground-floor retail. The developer filed early plans for that structure in December.
NX now has a pipeline of more than 600 apartments in Berkeley, more than half of which it proposed over the past three months. The company is working on a series of projects simultaneously to “get some scale” in its work in the city, George told the Business Times. All are within a three-mile radius.
NX intends to work with the same subcontractors and contractors for three of the four projects to cut costs, George said. The one at 2920 Shattuck Avenue will mostly be studios and one-bedrooms, and more than 40 percent of units will be affordable, he said. His company hasn’t determined how much ground-floor retail it will offer and is still working on its design. It expects to have a formal application sometime next month, George said.
Only one of NX’s four Berkeley developments has received city approval. The developer seeks to have at least two of them completed by the summer of 2024 and more done by the following summer, George told the Business Times.
[San Francisco Business Times] — Matthew Niksa
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