Berkeley's city council this week voted to approve a long-delayed deal to authorize BART to move forward with building hundreds of new housing units on the parking lot property at Ashby Station.

Plans for the project date back a number of years, and now, as of this week, the Berkeley City Council has blessed the plans in an 8-0 vote, as Berkeleyside reported. While BART owns the station and parking lot property, the city had maintained ownership of the air rights over the parking lot — which meant that it had leverage in dictating how the property may be developed.

The agreement, which will still need to be finalized with city planners and given final sign-off by the council this fall, gives BART the right to develop the 4.7-acre "west" parking lot — the large parking lot adjacent to the Ashby BART station where the 50-year-old Berkeley Flea Market happens each weekend. The city will separately develop the station's "east" parking lot, which is across Adeline Street and behind the nonprofit Ed Roberts Campus.

BART has agreed to making 50% of the first 602 units developed below-market-rate, with the goal of 35% affordability across the developments. And the agreement calls for new space to be provided for the flea market — which will be forced to relocate when ground is broken, sometime in the next year or two. And they've agreed to provided 5,000 square feet of retail/commercial space to community groups at below market rates.

This deal has been years in the making, and the city is hoping that it, along with the development of the parking lots at North Berkeley Station, will help satisfy its Housing Element mandate to approve over 9,000 new units by 2031.

As the Chronicle reported in July 2023, the most recent dispute between the city and BART had to do with a power substation that BART wants to expand at the site. A 10,000-square-foot area of the site, most of which is controlled by the city, is needed for maintenance, emergency vehicle access, a temporary substation, a large crane and staging areas for the new substation, and therefore won't be part of the housing development.

The Ashby site includes plans for three seven- to eight-story buildings, and a total of 602 units. The North Berkeley site will likely see around 700 units, spread amongst 13 buildings ranging from three to eight stories tall, as Berkeleyside earlier reported.

While this doesn't take into account the capacity of the "east" parking lot that will be developed separately, this 1,300-unit count is a far cry from the 3,600 units that planners had been talking about at these two sites — though that is because a proposal to rezone the properties to allow for 12-story buildings with the possibility of density bonuses that would rise up to 18 stories was shot down amid community objections.

Some community members spoke at Tuesday's city council meeting to push for 100% affordable units at the Ashby site, but Mayor Jesse Arreguin said "there is a certain reality in terms of what we can actually achieve," and had the city held out for more affordable units, the project might not get built at all.