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Architects and developers of buildings that promise to transform the face of Berkeley watched and listened Thursday as a city panel tweaked their plans. 

Present for the meeting of the Design Review Committee (DRC) were developers of major projects at 700 and 1885 University Ave., 2020 Addison St., 2929 Ashby Ave., and 2701 Shattuck Ave. 

700 University 

The 700 University project—a two-building project on the block that holds the landmarked Southern Pacific Railroad Station—will feature 171 units of housing over retail frontage that will extend the Fourth Street shopping scene south of the city’s main east/west thoroughfare. 

The number of units was reduced from the 212 specified in initial plans by architect Kava Massih. 

Dan Diebel of Urban Housing Group brought along a new financial partner and their architect to unveil new plans for the project, which they bill as the city’s new gateway landmark. 

The new partner is real estate investment trust (REIT) Essex Property Trust, represented at Thursday night’s meeting by Josh Corzine, the firm’s director of acquisitions for the East Bay and Marin County and the son of New Jersey Democratic U.S. Sen. John Corzine. 

The new partner is a corporate kin of Urban Housing Group, which is in turn a subsidiary of Marcus & Millichap Company, a leading national real estate investment brokerage firm, headquartered in Palo Alto and with offices across the country. Corporate chair George M. Marcus serves as an advisor to the Haas Real Estate Group of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. 

Marcus is also chairman of the board of Essex, and the first director listed after him on the firm’s web site is William A. Millichap—as in Marcus & Millichap. 

According to the firm’s media kit, before joining with Urban Housing, Essex owned 27 apartment complexes in the Bay Area, with a total of 6,626 units, including the Regency Tower in Oakland and 13 San Marcos in Richmond. 

Half of the firm’s properties are located in Southern California, with another quarter in North California and the rest in the Seattle, Wash., area and Portland, Ore. 

Before the new partner was added, Urban Housing had brought in new architects, Christiani & Johnson, replacing Massih. 

“The design has changed dramatically,” Corzine told the DRC, which is charged with approving plans before they go to the Zoning Adjustments Board. 

And DRC members loved the changes, which bring the height of the complex to within the 50-foot West Berkeley limit, and broke up the structure so that the two buildings look like more. 

Architect David Johnson said the design “will focus on cultural icons, the train station and Brennan’s.” 

Brennan’s Irish Pub, a cultural if not legal landmark, occupies a building at the northeast corner of the lot which will be demolished to make way for the project. Current plans call for the pub to be relocated in the train station, which was declared a city landmark in 2001. 

The new design is a faux industrial scheme, designed to make the new construction resemble conversions of older industrial buildings, complete with large expanses of corrugated metal and wood siding. 

“The loudest and clearest concern I heard was that (the previous design) wasn’t representative of West Berkeley,” said Johnson. The new version, he said, “is more eclectic and more free-form in the way we have handled the massing.” 

“I’m frankly amazed,” said Bob Allen, DRC chair and a ZAB member and architect himself. “I didn’t think I’d see a project here I was going to get excited about. I think it’s terrific.” 

“It’s handsome, exciting, playful,” said architect Burton Edwards, a DRC member and one of two representatives from the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC). 

“I agree,” said the DRC’s landscape architect Charles McCulloch. “It’s really great.” 

“I also was pleasantly surprised,” said Carrie Olson, the LPC’s other representative to design review. 

The only qualms from members concerned the addition of a functionless tower on one of the structures, an example of what Olson called false historicism. David Snippen, the Civic Arts Commission representative to the DRC agreed, though he too had praise for the overall concept. 

The loudest sour notes came during the public comment period came from Adolfo Cabral and Sarah Satterlee. 

Cabral, a member of the West Berkeley Project Area Commission, faulted the city for considering a primarily residential project ”when the use is not even legal.” Cabral also said that the plans fail to carry through the historic character of the station. 

Satterlee and other activists who created West Berkeley’s only landmarked historic district a block south of the project—the Sisterna Historic District 106—have criticized the plans as out of scale and inappropriate for the neighborhood and with creating the potential for traffic, parking and other problems.  

The site contains another one-time landmark, the building at the southeast corner of the lot that houses Celia’s Mexican Restaurant. 

A structure of merit designation bestowed on that building by the LPC was subsequently overturned by the City Council. 

1885 University 

Plans for this 148-apartment five-story residential-over-commercial structure, variously known as the Kragen Auto Part project (for the retailer now located at the site( and the Trader Joe’s building (for the prospective major ground floor tenant) have been a constant lightning rod for criticism by residential neighbors. 

Located at the corner of University and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, the site faces two major thoroughfares, with a residential street, Berkeley Way, immediately behind to the north. 

Developers Chris Hudson and Evan McDonald stepped the structure back on the northwest side in response to criticism that the original plans would literally overshadow nearby homes, and propose a traffic barrier near the western edge on the property on Berkeley Way. 

The barrier was a response to complaints from neighbors on Berkeley Way and Grant Street that locating the entrance to the building’s commercial parking lot on Berkeley Way would create a major increase in traffic and crowd already scarce parking slots on their streets. 

While some neighbors said they were pleased with the changes, others said they weren’t enough. 

And while DRC members had some criticism of details of the plans, the overall scheme proved much to their liking—save for Carrie Olson, who said, “I think we’ve all been steam-rolled.” 

But DRC approved the designs, with minor changes, and sent them on the ZAB, which will conducted a public hearing Nov. 9. 

2701 Shattuck 

Another project to win DRC approval was the five-floor mixed-use condominium complex planned for 2701 Shattuck Ave. 

The owner is the Choyce Family Trust, the creation of Rev. Gordon Choyce Sr., pastor of the Missionary Church of God in Christ and head of low-income housing builder Jubilee Restoration. 

The original plans for 2701 Shattuck, a for-profit project, were rejected by DRC and ZAB, going through multiple changes before the version presented Thursday. The building approved Thursday is a major change from the original plans, which called for a nondescript boxy structure. 

After going through multiple redesigns and rejections, the structure DRC approved resembles an ornate, turn-of-the-last century creation—adorned with what project spokesperson Krystelle Guzman called “a tremendous amount of detail.” 

But the detail was too much for DRC member, who ordered a scaling back, along with changes to the facade along Derby Street, which marks the property’s northern boundary. 

The resulting structure will still present perhaps the most complex facade of anything built in the city in recent years. 

“We’re going to make it a landmark building, a classical turn-of-the century apartment building,” said architect Todd Jersey. “I’m excited about the building.” 

DRC members ordered Jersey to abandon the ornate color stencil paintings of flowers planned for the exterior and simplify the ornate balcony railings. But the approved design still contains multiple elevations, both vertical and horizontal. 

2929 Ashby 

The committee got its first look at developer/realtor John Gordon’s plans for his building at 2929 Ashby Ave., just east of the College Avenue intersection in the Elmwood Business Improvement District. 

Partly vacant, the structure features a variety of storefronts and uses, including a garage and Dream Fluff Donuts. 

Gordon told DRC he plans to unify the front architecturally, with final plans to be determined by the number of eventual tenants, which he said could range from one to seven. 

The developer said he had run into some conflicts with other Elmwood merchants, “who want us to solve all the parking problems in the neighborhood.” 

Rather than adding a underground parking lot some merchants want, Gordon’s plans from architect Jim Novosel call for a waiver from providing three parking spaces. 

Gordon said he also faced the problem of finding tenants who would fit in with the quota system the city has in place in the district. 

Principal Planner Debra Sanderson urged the DRC to approve the project in a way that allowed Gordon the flexibility to alter the frontage according to the number of final tenants. 

“In this case, we are trying to give some flexibility as if it were a new building,” she said. 

DRC will give the plans more review before acting. 

2076 Ashby 

Because of a feud with the owner of a neighboring gas station owner, developer Athan Magannas was forced to resort to a middle-of-the-night, descent-from-the-rooftop stucco application rather than apply the siding in his original plans. 

Magannas brought the project to DRC for retroactive approval of the change, which he got. But members didn’t like other things they saw, including the colors he chose and the fact that utility meters were out in the open instead of in a closed closet as had been the case in the plans they had approved earlier. 

Magannas said the colors had been approved by a city planning staffer, now on maternity leave. 

DRC members approved the stucco, held back on the color schemes till a check could be made with the staff member and ordered the meters enclosed. 

Image: An artist’s rendering shows architect David Johnson’s plans for a 171-unit apartment and retail complex at 700 University Ave., which won high praise from the Design Review Committee Thursday. Plans call for the project to carry the Fourth Street retail shopping area south of the University Avenue overcrossing. This view looks west at the project from near the corner of Fourth Street and University.