It’s official. After several rounds of proposals, an 11‑story post‑and‑plate mass‑timber tower will rise over the site of 1523 Harrison Street in Oakland after revised plans were approved by the City of Oakland this week, clearing the way for oWOW to build on a site once envisioned to be a 28‑story “plyscraper.”
Wood Central understands that the final design calls for an 11‑story block‑shaped structure. Its first two floors will form a concrete podium, with the upper nine floors built from mass plywood panels (MPP), a material billed as 15 per cent cheaper and 25 per cent faster to construct than traditional steel and concrete.
The building will stand 106 feet (32.3 metres) tall. It will contain 195,360 square feet (18,150 square metres) of interior space, including 164,800 square feet (15,310 square metres) for housing and building services and 30,540 square feet (2,837 square metres) for parking.
All 284 units will be designated as affordable housing.
Of these, 281 will be reserved for residents and three for on‑site managers. Sixty‑one units are allocated for very low‑income households, while 220 are set aside for low‑income residents. The mix leans heavily toward smaller apartments, with 63 efficiency units, 203 one‑bedrooms, and just 18 two‑bedrooms.
oWOW’s in‑house architecture team is responsible for the design. Renderings show a duo‑tone façade of white and blue panels, with the base wrapped in dark grey fibre-cement cladding for added texture.
The project is one of three mass‑timber developments that WOW is advancing in the Bay Area. According to Andrew Ball, oWOW’s president, the developer intends to scale engineered‑wood construction worldwide using Freres Lumber’s mass plywood panels, a new veneer‑based cross‑laminated timber product.
Speaking to Wood Central last year, Andrew Dunn, CEO of Australian-based Timber Development Association, described MPP as “a game‑changer in the world of sustainable construction materials.”
“MPP is produced by scarfing cross‑banded LVL together, creating a cross‑laminated timber product,” Dunn told Wood Central after visiting the site of 1510 Harrison Street, Oakland – a 19-story development, the world’s largest mass plywood panel tower, which said the system forms a post‑and‑plate structure resembling concrete flat plates, giving it both strength and speed advantages.
Wood Central understands the site occupies a whole block bounded by Harrison Street, Webster Street, 15th Street, and 17th Street and sits between the Downtown Oakland and Lakeside neighbourhoods, an area defined by a mix of residential and commercial buildings.
