One of the first things I noticed when I moved to Berkeley in 2023 was the empty storefronts. Along Center, Shattuck, Oxford, and other streets, I noticed long stretches of closed businesses, fenced off or boarded up. I assumed they had closed due to the pandemic, and being the curious, investigative person that I am, I never looked into it.

Two years later, I had the bright idea to map empty storefronts in Downtown Berkeley. I quickly learned that most of the empty storefronts are actually sites for planned multi-family housing projects—in the form of six to 28-story towers—that just haven’t broken ground yet. This opened up a steady stream of questions: Why haven’t these housing projects broken ground? When did these projects get approved? And just how many multi-family housing projects are coming to Berkeley?

The first thing to know is that in 2019, California passed Senate Bill 330, which effectively streamlined the process for building new housing and limited the ability of cities to slow or stop new developments. My research led me to a map of development apparently created by Eric Gellerman, a realtor. This gave me a sense of the scope of Berkeley’s development boom, but I wanted to dig into it further, using verifiable records.

I asked Berkeley’s Planning and Development Department for existing maps of housing developments, and Jim Bondi, a management analyst, told me, “That information does exist, but it will require some work for you to extract it.” He wasn’t joking.

I ended up scraping and reviewing every Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board meeting minutes document since the start of 2019 up until May 22, 2025. I also reviewed Berkeley’s records of active land use reviews.

These documents paint a pretty clear picture: a lot of housing towers are planned for Downtown Berkeley, but most of them haven’t been finished, and reportedly due to the cost of building, it’s not clear when they will be finished.

Yet at some point, over 4,600 units of multi-family housing will likely be coming to Downtown Berkeley. How many of these projects should be called “towers” can be debated, but the projects will likely stand out. According to one article, the current tallest Berkeley building, excluding the Sather Tower (the Campanile), is the 186-foot tall Chase building, which has about 13 stories by my count. Based on current plans, around eight of the proposed housing projects will eventually eclipse the current tallest building in Berkeley.

Based on the City of Berkeley planning records, most of these housing projects will include below market rate units. Around 11% of the units analyzed will range from being designated “low income” to “very low income.” This aligns with California’s Senate Bill 35, which streamlines housing proposals that include at least 10% affordable units.