It's finally happening, Oaklanders. The long-awaited, two-decades-in-the-making MacArthur Transit Village, adjacent to the MacArthur BART station, is finally starting residential construction next week. The developer of the first, affordable phase of the construction is Bridge Housing. The building is called Mural and it will contain 90 rental units, with a design by S.F. architects Van Meter Williams Pollack.
As the Business Times reports, Bridge is still in negotiations with market-rate developers to figure out the next phases of the development, which will ultimately fill the entire 7.75-acre site that has for decades been a surface parking lot for BART.
See the full master plan here and here.
Technically the first groundbreaking for the project happened two years ago, but that was just for the parking structure facing MacArthur Boulevard, which is now nearing completion.
Ultimately, the Transit Village will have 625 total units in total, most of those market-rate, as well as 40,000 square feet of retail space, and it is certain to dramatically transform this quiet section of Oakland between Piedmont and Temescal. But that is many years away, as the first 90 units won't even be done until 2015.
