OAKLAND — The future for a huge housing development in Oakland has turned murky now that a lender has seized the project site through its foreclosure of a delinquent real estate loan.
The foreclosure casts doubt and uncertainty over the fate of a project that could have produced well over 1,000 homes in West Oakland.
San Francisco-based Panoramic Development had proposed the housing project on a site that’s bounded by Kirkham Street, 7th Street, Union Street and 5th Street, Oakland planning files show.
Panoramic bought the site, whose official address is 500 Kirkham Street, for $7.1 million in 2017.
In 2021, acting through an affiliate, Panoramic Development obtained a $6.25 million loan from CPIF California, which is an entity controlled by Columbia Pacific Advisors.
This is the loan that toppled into default in March of this year, ultimately leading to the foreclosure, according to documents filed on Oct. 2 with the Alameda County Recorder’s Office.
Panoramic had been eyeing the development of 1,032 residences, a project that the real estate firm dubbed CitySpaces.
The housing development at 500 Kirkham was one of several proposed projects that collectively were expected to usher in a dramatic transformation of the neighborhood next to the West Oakland BART station.
The grand vision to resculpt the neighborhood has yet to materialize in a big way, other than the completion in 2020 of the 110-unit The Union apartments at 532 Union Street in Oakland.
It’s unclear what might be the game plan for the 500 Kirkham Street development site now that the Columbia Pacific Advisors affiliate has taken ownership of the property.
Lenders typically eschew strategies that oblige them to develop or own on a long-term basis properties that they have seized through foreclosure.
The development at 500 Kirkham Street development might have been able to address a key segment of the housing market in the Bay Area.
“500 Kirkham is Panoramic’s proposed new workforce housing development, adjacent to the West Oakland BART station,” Panoramic stated in a post on the project’s website.