he Rockridge Community Planning Council (RCPC) recently sent the letter below regarding the proposed “CCA Project” at 5212 Broadway to both the Oakland Planning Commission and the Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board on the occasion of hearings regarding the project in front of both those bodies.
For those readers not familiar with this project, it is a proposal to construct new rental apartments on the former California College of the Arts (CCA) campus on Broadway at College Avenue. This project has been long discussed and debated in our community. After a longer-than-usual City approval process, the project is slated for final approval later this year, and recently underwent hearings on its environmental impact report.
The board is pleased with the proposal, but we understand that it may not be perfect from the perspective of many in the community. Some believe it should provide more than the included ten percent affordable units. Others think it is too dense. Some are unhappy that the project will displace several existing buildings on the CCA campus, while others think the project design made too many compromises in the name of historic preservation.
No development proposal of this size is likely to please everyone. But the RCPC Board voted to support this project because it believes in the urgency of providing new housing both statewide and in Oakland and because it believes that Rockridge, as a “high resource” neighborhood, with access to good schools and services and proximity to excellent public transit, has a moral obligation to do its part in addressing the housing crisis. All board members would prefer that the project include more than ten percent affordable housing, but we understand that requiring more would almost certainly render the project financially infeasible and it
would never be built.
We look forward to seeing 448 new apartments at the CCA site. We also hope for the day when we can see at least that many more homes built on the vacant lot at the Ridge (Broadway and Pleasant Valley) as well as at a few other opportunity sites scattered around Rockridge.
