UC Berkeley plans to build its tallest dorm yet in Southside neighborhood

Conceptual rendering of the Bancroft-Fulton student housing project, as viewed from the corner of Fulton St. and Durant Ave. Credit: UC Berkeley Capital Strategies / Kieran Timberlake

UC Berkeley has shared initial plans to build a 23-story dorm for Cal freshmen and sophomores in the Southside neighborhood. 

If approved by the UC Regents, the high-rise, located at what is currently the university’s Public Affairs Office and an adjacent surface parking lot at Bancroft Way and Fulton Street, would become UC Berkeley’s tallest dorm to date and provide about 1,500 beds of student housing.

The building’s final height, layout and project timeline still remain in flux, but UC Berkeley is aiming to present the proposal to the regents in March or May, Kyle Gibson, a spokesperson for UC Berkeley Capitol Strategies, told Berkeleyside. Construction of the estimated 350,000-square-foot project could break ground “as early as” late 2025 and is expected to take between 2.5 to 3 years, he said. 

According to preliminary renderings UC Berkeley shared with the city’s Zoning Adjustments Board’s Design Review Committee for discussion earlier this fall, the all-electric building could have a height of up to 276 feet — which would make it the tallest building in the Southside neighborhood to date and among the tallest in the city. The proposed UC Berkeley dorm would not need city approval because it is a UC project.

Conceptual rendering of the Bancroft-Fulton Student Housing project, as viewed from the east on Bancroft Way. Credit: UC Berkeley Capital Strategies / KieranTimberlake

“We’re not saying it’s going to necessarily be that tall, but that is the height that we are currently studying designs up to,” Gibson said. 

Berkeley’s tallest building is currently the Campanile, which stands at 307 feet, followed by the SkyDeck tower, which has a height of about 190 feet, is Downtown Berkeley’s tallest building. Several towers that could overtake Skydeck’s title have been floated for downtown Berkeley: on Shattuck over the site of the former Walgreens Pharmacy, at Oxford and Center across the street from BAMPFA, and on the corner of University and Shattuck, where a McDonald’s currently stands. 

In the Southside neighborhood, where zoning regulations allowing for taller buildings went into effect last year, a developer recently pitched a 200-foot tall, 20-story apartment tower on Durant Avenue in the property next to Yogurt Park, SF YIMBY has reported. 

Where else UC Berkeley is building dorms

The newly opened Helen Diller Anchor House for transfer students displays banners welcoming their first residents during move-in week, Aug. 21, 2024. Credit: Ximena Natera, Berkeleyside/ CatchLight

Cal is in the midst of a student housing boom after decades of underproduction made it the UC campus that offers guaranteed housing to the smallest percentage of its students. 

This year, UC Berkeley opened the 772-bed Anchor House, as well as a 761-bed graduate student housing in Albany named xučyun ruwway, a Chochenyo Ohlone name meant to honor local Indigenous people. Prior to that, in 2018, it opened the 752-bed Blackwell Hall in the Southside neighborhood, named for the school’s first tenured African American tenured professor. 

And inside the shipping container walls that surround People’s Park, UC Berkeley broke ground in July on a 1,100-bed student housing complex — a hotly contested project that was delayed by three years due to protests and lawsuits seeking to stop development on the historic site symbolizing Berkeley’s counterculture. 

In 2017, then-Chancellor Carol Christ set a goal of providing two years of campus housing for entering freshmen and one year of housing for entering transfer students — the equivalent of 9,000 beds, based on current enrollment data, Gibson said. 

UC Berkeley says it has projects in the pipeline that would bring it more than halfway to meeting that goal. The Channing-Ellsworth parking garage “could be on deck for housing” in the future, Gibson said. 

Most units in proposed dorm would be triples

Conceptual rendering of the Bancroft-Fulton Student Housing project, view of the residential lobby. Credit: UC Berkeley Capital Strategies / Kieran TimberlakeConceptual rendering of the Bancroft-Fulton Student Housing project, view of the dining commons entry. Credit: UC Berkeley Capital Strategies / Kieran Timberlake

Unlike the $300 million Helen Diller Anchor House that opened earlier this year and provides apartment-style housing for transfer students, expect the Bancroft and Fulton project to look more like your classic dormitory — meaning shared bathrooms and study spaces. A 500-seat, two-floor dining commons will have some outdoor terrace seating.

A “vast majority” of the units will be triples, Gibson said. It’ll also include some doubles and singles, though single rooms will mostly be reserved for residence assistants and disabled students who need accessible units. 

There will be no parking lot, but Cal plans to compensate for parking spaces lost to new construction by rebuilding the Bancroft parking structure.   

A cost estimate for the dorm was not available as of publication time, but UC Berkeley plans to fund construction using limited project revenue bond credits, meaning it would take on debt and repay it using revenue generated by rent.

Gibson did not say how much rent is expected to cost students. Rates, which are set by UC Berkeley Housing, will be “relatively the same rates for the same type of housing in all of our buildings,” he said. “We want to have our students and populations mixed and not have them broken up by necessarily how much you can afford to pay.”