A long-approved mixed-use building at 6518 San Pablo Avenue in Oakland has picked up some of its building permits this week, and its development team has released an updated rendering showing off the project's colorful new look. The 10-unit building sits just blocks from Oakland's borders with Berkeley and Emeryville, in a stretch of San Pablo Avenue that's quickly becoming a testing ground for infill housing.
According to San Francisco YIMBY, the development team released the more up-to-date visual around the same time the project was issued some of its building permits earlier this week. Design Manou is listed as the project architect and applicant, filing through Project Zero LLC. Notably, the publication reports that the updated plans retain approximately the same height and number of units as what was approved earlier this year, suggesting the changes are mostly cosmetic rather than structural.
What's Actually Getting Built
The project is expected to yield 10 new residential units, per the same report, along with a new street-front commercial space facing San Pablo Avenue. The structure is expected to rise to roughly 40 feet, with the building expected to contain around 8,555 square feet overall, of which approximately 380 square feet is set aside for the ground-floor commercial area.
Exterior finishes will reportedly mix brick veneer, multicolor siding, and stucco cladding, with the facade's illustrated color palette running through green, brown, orange, white, blue, and grey. The design also calls for a narrow stylized retail entrance, porthole-style windows, and an articulated facade, the outlet notes — details that suggest the developers are aiming for a building that stands out rather than blends in along the corridor.
It's worth noting that an earlier record told a slightly different story. A 2025 Oakland applications-on-file document had listed a proposal for the same address calling for nine residential units and 480 square feet of ground-floor commercial space, figures that don't quite match this week's 10-unit, 380-square-foot description. The dossier doesn't clarify whether one figure supersedes the other, so both versions are worth keeping in mind as the project moves through construction.
A Prime Spot Near Three Cities
The parcel sits along San Pablo Avenue between 65th and 66th streets, close to Oakland's borders with both Berkeley and Emeryville — a location that puts future residents within easy reach of neighborhood amenities on either side of the city line. Future residents are expected to be about 13 minutes on foot, or roughly five minutes by bicycle, from Berkeley Bowl West.
The 6518 San Pablo project isn't happening in isolation. Just down the street, a separate proposal at 6500 San Pablo Avenue would turn a 3,600-square-foot lot into a five-story mixed-use building with 10 residential units spread across the upper four stories and a ground-floor commercial space, according to a separate San Francisco YIMBY report. That project, designed by ICE Design Inc., would expand to 14,330 total square feet and reserve its top story as a shared roof deck for residents, sitting right at the corner of San Pablo and 65th Street near the Emeryville and Berkeley borders.
Berkeley Loosens Height Limits Next Door
The timing lines up with a bigger shift just across the city line. Berkeley officials this week approved zoning changes raising the height limit along the West Berkeley stretch of San Pablo Avenue from three stories to seven for residential and commercial developments, according to Berkeleyside. The new plan also lets developers put apartments, instead of commercial space, on ground floors of projects built outside five designated commercial nodes along the avenue.
Together, the changes on both sides of the Oakland-Berkeley line point to a corridor in flux, with San Pablo Avenue positioned to absorb considerably more housing in the years ahead. For now, the 6518 San Pablo Avenue project remains the more concrete near-term development, having already cleared its approval and begun collecting permits this week.
