Transit, Front and Center

Dublin Transit Center project to include housing, retail and parking

By Robert Carlsen

The Dublin/Pleasanton Bay Area Rapid Transit station is beefing up its parking space with a new, seven-story, 1,513-slot garage that will be surrounded by a new housing village called the Dublin Transit Center.

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The new garage, designed by Los Angeles-based International Parking Design and being built by Howard S. Wright Construction of Seattle, will be the cornerstone for the new community, which will ultimately include 1,800 homes, a village green, retail shops, a hotel and 1.7 million sq ft of office space all within a short walk from the BART station.

One housing project has already opened at the center, San Rafael-based Ecumenical Association for Housing's 112-unit Camellia Place. This four-story building surrounding a landscaped courtyard is available to households earning between 20 percent and 60 percent of the area median income, and features a second-floor community room, computer center and offices.

The general contractor for Camellia Place was James E. Roberts/Obayashi of Danville and the architect was Irvine-based KTGY Group.

Two other communities are under construction - DR Horton's Elan at Dublin Station, a 257-unit luxury condominium project, and AvalonBay's Avalon at Dublin Station, a 305-unit luxury rental apartment project.

DR Horton's Elan will open first in November and the developer is planning another project at the center, the 300-unit Metropolitan.

Avalon at Dublin Station includes studios, 1-, 2-, and 3-bedroom floor plans and also has 2-bedroom, 2-story townhouse floor plans. The community will offer a full range of resident amenities, including a pool, residents' lounge, wi-fi areas, resident parking and even a bocce ball court. There will also be 15,000 sq ft of ground floor retail in the AvalonBay buildings.

GGLO is the architect on the property and AvalonBay is managing the construction. AvalonBay is projecting first occupancy for the fall of 2007 and completion by the summer of 2008 on the first phase of the project.

Construction began in April of 2006.

AvalonBay is currently working on the plans for the Phase II portion of the community, which will feature an additional 405 luxury rental apartments. The current plan calls for construction on this portion of the community to begin in mid- to late 2008.

Meanwhile, Vinson Heine, project manager at Howard S. Wright on the BART garage project, says the main challenge in building adjacent to the station is not interrupting operations.

"We had to relocate the main power systems, so we needed to coordinate very closely with BART," he says.

The garage, which is sited on a portion of the current surface parking lot, should be completed in early March, Vinson adds.

Three miles away from the center a new West Dublin/Pleasanton station is planned, though construction has not yet begun. What has begun are two parking garages at the site, according to BART spokesman Linton Johnson.

International Parking Design is once again the architect/engineer for West Dublin and West Pleasanton parking structure (each one will be on both sides of the station and tracks), and Overaa Construction of Richmond is the general contractor.

Building construction for both structures will be concrete with four elevated decks on Dublin and five elevated decks in Pleasanton. The concrete design is based on the shear walls on the perimeter with post tension elevated deck and beams. Dublin has 717 parking spaces and Pleasanton has 472 parking spaces.

Construction is scheduled for completion in March 2009.

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