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EMERYVILLE — The developer of a 105-unit apartment building that was twice destroyed by arsonists within a year says he plans to donate it to UC Berkeley for much needed student housing.
Rick Holliday, of Emeryville-based Holliday Development, said in an interview with this news organization last week that he and the wife of his late development partner will hand over the building, known as The Intersection, as soon as it’s complete in six to eight months. It is located at 3800 San Pablo Ave., at the juncture of Adeline Street, MacArthur Boulevard and San Pablo Avenue, near the Oakland border.
“Let’s try to make something positive out of this bad experience,” Holliday said, referring to the arson fires.
“This generous gift will allow the campus to secure housing units unburdened by debt, allowing us to more affordably provide housing for the exclusive use of our campus population,” John Arvin, UC Berkeley’s associate vice chancellor of capital projects, said in a letter to the city.
The development, which includes a parking garage and 17,158 square feet of retail space in an adjacent commercial building, was approved by the Planning Commission in 2013. At the time, all the apartments were supposed to be market rate.
While under construction, the development was destroyed in July 2016 by a suspicious six-alarm fire that also torched a nearby car repair shop.
Holliday vowed to rebuild, installed a dozen surveillance cameras and hired a security company that had armed guards patrol the property.
Despite those measures, though, the building was apparently torched again in May 2017, also while under construction.
After the second blaze, Holliday said he believed someone was “setting these fires for political reasons.”
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives later concluded the fires were deliberately set, and two months after the second blaze at Holliday’s site it released a surveillance video clip of a hooded person donning gloves and scaling the side of the apartment building before leaving the area just as the structure started to burn.
The historic Maz commercial building, which is being rehabilitated as part of the project, also was damaged by the fire.
“When you build a wood-frame building, before you put sheetrock and all of the pieces of the puzzle to finish the building, you’re, in effect, a Burning Man sculpture for about six weeks,” Holliday said.
“I’ve been in the business 40 years, and it’s the worst thing that has ever happened to me,” he said.
Both fires were started in an unfinished stairwell of the apartment building, he said.
Dustin Bellinger, 45, was arrested in November 2018 in connection with an October 2018 fire at the two-story Hollis Oak Apartments, which also was under construction.
Hours earlier on the same day as the Hollis Oak fire, a blaze was set at the nearly completed 126-unit Ice House townhouse complex.
The fires were among 10 that occurred at housing complexes under construction in the East Bay since 2012.
Bellinger admitted guilt in the Hollis Oak fire and was sentenced to five years in prison in October 2019. He was never connected to the other fires.
Holliday vowed to try again but a year and a half ago decided to construct the building from modular units manufactured elsewhere.
“A year ago, my business partner’s wife and I decided, let’s finish it and give it to UC Berkeley,” he said. “That was our decision that we kept private. I shared that with the city of Emeryville about six months ago.”
But when the coronavirus pandemic hit, the Bay Area’s shelter-in-place orders put a temporary stop to housing projects except for those that included at least 10 percent of affordable homes.
Holliday thought construction on his project should have been allowed to continue because he intended to donate all of it as student housing. But the city administration wasn’t satisfied with his pledge or a letter from the university saying it would accept the donation.
Holliday and city officials then agreed to a new affordable housing pact that requires 11 of the units to be deed-restricted for households at or below 80 percent of the area median income.
“I wasn’t trying to worm around some deal and just put 10 percent on there. We’re giving the whole building away,” Holliday said.
The university intends to make the apartments available to graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, “who are among our most housing insecure academic populations,” Arvin’s letter to the city said.
“The campus also intends to occupy the commercial space with a campus-operated health service that will have both an instructional and community-serving component,” Arvin said. The donation was approved by the UC Board of Regents at a meeting in January, he said.
Emeryville City Manager Christine Daniel said Monday the affordable housing agreement is “being finalized” but still needs to be notarized and turned over to the county recorder’s office to become official.
She said the city has chosen to let work continue at the site in the meantime.
