Plans for TOD Housing at Berkeley BART Station

Berkeley, California, wants to be proactive about transit-oriented development around the Bay Area Rapid Transit station in North Berkeley, reports Jared Brey. Last year the state passed legislation requiring BART to develop height and density guidelines by 2022 for its land adjacent to stations, and this month the Berkeley city council voted to establish a memorandum of understanding with the agency about future planning.

City leaders would like to see less height along with less parking and more density. Some community members are also calling for 100 percent of the units to be affordable housing, but that would be a difficult outcome to achieve. “The site could end up being built out with hundreds of new housing units, at least a portion of which will be affordable for low-income residents,” says Brey.

The fact that the Berkeley community is supporting the planning process for the North Berkeley BART station is very positive, say BART representatives and city officials. “More developers are able to work with BART on transit-oriented projects than they were when the TOD program launched in the 1990s, [Abby] Thorne-Lyman [of BART] says. Land has gotten more valuable and the housing shortage has gotten worse. But BART’s standards for affordability and open space are high,” notes Brey.