Council OKs 248 market-rate apartments as downtown continues growth

City leaders Tuesday gave the final go-ahead to developers who plan to demolish a bank building to make way for 248 marketrate apartments and over 5,000 square feet of groundfloor retail in the city’s budding downtown core.

The Fremont City Council voted unanimously to support the project from Oakland-based BayRock Multifamily LLC, which will include a five-story building partially wrapping around a six-story parking garage along downtown’s main drag of Capitol Avenue.

The project will continue reshaping the area along Capitol, the heart of a 110acre planned downtown in the city center, which is bounded by Paseo Padre to the east, Mowry Avenue to the north, Fremont Boulevard to the west and Walnut Avenue to the south.

After decades without a social and civic center for the city, leaders initially committed to make the area a “sustainable, vibrant pedestrianoriented mixed-use destination for Fremont and the region,” in a plan approved in 2012.

The BayRock project would pick up where the first major mixed-use project for the area, Locale @ State Street left off.

That recently completed project from SummerHill Homes, TMG Partners, and Sares-Regis includes 157 market-rate condominiums and about 21,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space along Capitol and side streets.

The city also recently broke ground on a longplanned community center and public plaza along Capitol near State Street, which is the first phase of the city’s bigger dreams to overhaul the civic center and construct a 175,000-square-foot administration building, though that part of the plan has been put on hold indefinitely because of a lack of funding.

Farther east on Capitol, plans also are in the works for two more mixed-use developments, which together would include 134 residential units and nearly 28,000 square feet of commercial space. Construction is also underway on 275 marketrate apartments at Walnut Avenue and Liberty Street.

Fremont Bank plans to sell much of the 2.2-acre site to BayRock for the mixeduse building, which will require the razing of the current main bank building at 39150 Fremont Blvd. and two other smaller buildings.

The bank, however, will retain a 0.23-acre site at Capitol Avenue and Fremont Boulevard, where the company proposes to construct a new, 32,800 squarefoot headquarters building.

The 248 rental apartments in the BayRock project will feature 91 studio and “junior” one-bedroom units, 104 one-bedroom units and 53 two-bedroom units, and about 5,625 square feet of ground-floor commercial leasing space, according to city staff reports.

“This is a great project,” Vice Mayor Rick Jones said Tuesday, echoing other council members who said the project fits well with the city’s vision for downtown.

However, parking was a contentious issue on this project as the garage will provide a total of 320 parking spaces, with 65 groundfloor spaces for the exclusive use of Fremont Bank employees and customers, and the remaining spots on upper floors for residents, guests, and commercial employees.

Cindy Hom, representing her family, which owns the Gaslight Square shopping center adjacent to the bank building, appealed to the City Council — requesting that the city require BayRock to share some parking spaces for her restaurant tenants to use.

Without making up some of the shared parking in place under the current layout of the area, “I don’t know how any of the businesses will survive,” she said, referring to her tenants, which include Bill’s Cafe, Falafel Etc., Munchner Haus Delicatessen and Yokohama Iekei Ramen.

Earlier this year, the city’s zoning administrator had required BayRock to share 19 garage spaces to be shared with Gaslight to help offset the loss of parking spaces when the new buildings are complete.

However, BayRock and the bank appealed that decision to the Planning Commission, which removed the shared parking requirement.

The City Council on Tuesday ultimately agreed with the commission and city staff members, who determined that the dispute over parking was a civil matter among Fremont Bank, BayRock and Gaslight and rejected Hom’s appeal.

City Councilman Vinnie Bacon said that the smaller units in the buildings will help them be “affordable by design” — and that a limited number of parking spaces might not be such a problem in the commercial center.

“If we’re trying to get more of a downtown flavor there, that’s what we want, we want something that’s going to be tight, and parking is going to be an issue, and I think that might encourage more people to walk and bike, and that’s a good thing,” he said.

“Overall I do think this is a good project for our downtown,” he said.