City Ventures Switches Plans With 90 Townhomes in Oakland

City Ventures has swapped an approved plan to build 44 condominiums in West Oakland for 90 condominiums or townhomes

The Irvine-based developer has filed plans to build the 90-unit complex at 1405 Wood Street, the San Francisco Business Times reported. It would replace a vacant lot.

The project would be built north of the defunct 16th Street Train Station a mile from the West Oakland BART and a block from Raimondi Park. City Ventures bought the lot of unknown size for $1.1 million at the end of last year.

It’s a block from a 171-unit townhome complex City Ventures completed in 2018 that rose as part of the Wood Street Zoning District project, a city-level push to rehab 30 acres along Wood, a frontage road next to Interstate 880 with housing and commercial development.

Hundreds of affordable and market rate homes were built there more than a decade ago.

City Ventures obtained approval for the condominium project at 1405 Wood in 2015. Phil Kerr, the company’s CEO of homebuilding, declined to explain to the Business Times why it jettisoned its original plans.

He said the company thinks the real estate fundamentals in West Oakland are robust enough to support its latest proposal, despite rising interest rates and construction costs.

“It’s the same reason we did our first project in West Oakland. A lot of people were stepping back. But the need for housing is not going to go away,” Kerr told the Business Times. “Townhomes we have done there have been very successful.”

City Ventures, which develops solar-powered and all-electric homes, has a portfolio of townhomes mostly priced between $500,000 and just over $1 million.

Kerr did not disclose the type of homes the firm wants to build in West Oakland, but said City Ventures would stick to the “median price model” at 1405 Wood.

City Ventures has much more 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.

— Dana Bartholomew