Plaza BART Update

A 70-unit apartment building is planned for this parking lot at Central Avenue and Richmond Street.

Report to BART Board

Construction of the first apartment building at El Cerrito Plaza BART could start as early as August 2025.

That information was part of an update on Transit Oriented Development projects presented at a BART board meeting on Feb. 13.

Kasheica McKinney reported that the developer at El Cerrito Plaza BART has so far secured $90 million in housing and infrastructure funding. This includes $39 million in funding from the State of California’s Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) program awarded to the city and the developer, Related California.

The First Building

El Cerrito Assistant to the City Manager Will Provost said the first building to break ground in the transit-oriented development will be a 70-unit affordable housing project at 515 Richmond St., on the parking lot at the northwest corner of Richmond Street and Central Avenue.

Currently the developer is seeking tax credits and if those are obtained, construction could start as soon as August 2025, McKinney said.

El Cerrito City Council member William Ktsanes said Low Income Housing Tax Credits are a primary way in which the federal government finances affordable housing. The federal government allocates federal tax grants which states then distribute in a competitive process.

James Allison, Manager of Media Relations at BART, said a decision on the application for tax credits is expected this spring.

The 515 Richmond St. project will consist of 1-, 2-, and 3-bedroom apartments for low, very low, and extremely low-income family households. The 70-unit project will have 29 parking spaces, including one for a shared car, and a secure bike storage room with space for 106 bikes.

Climate for Construction

At the BART board meeting, consultant Darin Smith of Economic and Planning Systems said apartment construction is currently low in the five-county BART service area. Construction costs have risen more quickly than rents and interest rates are relatively high. Since 2019, there has been a “significant and steady decline in the number of units under construction,” Smith said.

In the last two years, affordable housing has taken on a bigger share of completed units, Smith said.

About one-third of all units produced in the last two years were affordable units, Smith said. The cost of building an affordable unit is higher than for a market-rate unit. Requirements for affordable projects are often tougher to meet and financing usually requires that developers “cobble together a dozen funding sources,” he said.

In the case of 515 Richmond St., the city of El Cerrito contributed $350,000 in a forgivable loan. It also made available a nearby parcel of land for use in developing affordable housing in the transit-oriented development. The parcel is not the one at 515 Richmond St., Provost said.

New Bike Lanes and Programs

The $39 million Affordable Housing loan will go toward building materials and upgraded bus connections, and a lot more.

According to the city’s grant application, there will be funding for three new bike lanes.

These will be on Central Avenue from Carlson Boulevard to Richmond Street, Lincoln Avenue from San Pablo Avenue to Ashbury Avenue, and San Diego Street/Belmont Avenue from Carlson Boulevard to Cerrito Creek Trail. Grant funding is included for traffic-calming measures on Lincoln Avenue and San Diego Street.

The grant application lists funding for Bike East Bay to provide safety education training programs that may include bike safety workshops, bike repair workshops, walking school buses or other group walking activities, Safe Routes to School or Transit. Training programs will include distribution of items including but not limited to bicycles, helmets, other safety equipment, or lights, to low-income residents of the project area. Programs and giveaways will be advertised broadly in the project area and in more than one language.

Funding is also included for internships through the Construction Industry Workforce Initiative (CIWI) program. CIWI’s mission is to provide career development opportunities for first generation and low-income college students with an interest in construction, real estate development, architecture and engineering.

And the grant will cover creation of El Cerrito’s first program to help low-income renters who are facing possible eviction, according to the application. The city plans to contract with a third party for these services, the application says.