23-story office tower planned for City Center Site
is one
block from high-rise Shorenstein finished
in 2002
September 26,
2007
By Kelly Rayburn, STAFF WRITER
The Oakland Tribune
OAKLAND — Oakland
City Center is moving up.
Developers'
plans to build a 23-story, 500,000-square-foot office tower will be given
to city staff today, as Shorenstein Properties, working with MetLife Real
Estate Investments, hopes to capitalize on what it sees as another ripe
development opportunity downtown.
The tower is
planned for an undeveloped patch of land bounded by 11th, 12th and
Jefferson streets and Martin Luther King Jr. Way.
Shorenstein,
which owns City Center, has had plans for the site for years.
Executives
with both companies joined Mayor Ron Dellums in saying plans to build
the office tower reflected a healthy economy in the city for such projects.
"I think
this is a tremendous statement of optimism on behalf of the business community
with respect to the future of Oakland," Dellums said.
A more tangible
impact — the building's effect on Oakland's skyline — won't
go unnoticed, either.
As financial
markets swayed, the company originally planned to build office space,
before switching its plans to condos and then back to office space when
the housing sector tanked.
"It's been in active planning of some sort for probably two-and-a-half,
three years," said Shorenstein President Glenn Shannon.
The tower would
rank among the city's tallest buildings.
Only six buildings in Oakland are more than 23 stories, according to
Emporis, an independent research group that catalogues high-rise construction.
Those buildings
are the 28-story Ordway Building on Valdez Street, the 28-story Kaiser
Center on Lakeside Drive, the 27-story Lake Merritt Plaza on Harrison
Street, the 24-story tower at 1111 Broadway, the 25-story Kaiser Engineering
Building on Harrison Street and the 24-story Clorox Building on Broadway.
By comparison,
555 City Center Tower, oneblock east of the proposed building's site and
completed by Shorenstein in 2002, is 20 stories.
Ground breaking
for the new building is scheduled for April. Construction time is estimated
at two years.
Shorenstein
executives declined to estimate how much the project will cost, but it
will be completed without city subsidies.
There's no
word yet on who the tenants will be, though Shannon said preliminary conversations
indicate there's high anticipation.
"We feel
really good about the level of interest from the tenant community," he
said.
555 City Center
struggled at first to fill up after its anchor tenant, Ask.com, pulled
out.
But Shorenstein
executives said the building is now 100 percent leased — and
that more than more than half of the companies there came from outside
Oakland.
Shorenstein
aims to make its newest building not only taller, but also more environmentally
friendly.
Executives
said the building, designed by architect Ted Korth of the firm Korth Sunseri
Hagey, will be constructed to meet the standards of the Leadership in
Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System.
There are various
levels of LEED certification, and Shorenstein development head Todd Sklar
said he did not yet know what level of certification would be sought.
"We don't know yet," he said. "We know that we will be certified.
We're going to be pushing it as hard as we can."
LEED certification would make the tower the largest privately owned green
office building in downtown Oakland, executives said. |
