A two-story duplex at 425 W MacArthur Boulevard in Oakland could soon be torn down and replaced with a three-story, 18-unit apartment building, according to newly filed permits. The site sits in the Mosswood neighborhood of North Oakland, just one block from Mosswood Community Center and Park.
New permits have been filed for the multifamily development, as reported by San Francisco YIMBY. The proposed building would include a common lobby, a shared laundry room, and a shared roof deck, though the exact layouts of the building and unit sizes have yet to be revealed, per the same report.
Notably, the unit count described in the newest filing differs from an earlier version of the project. A 2025 report on the site described updated plans calling for 20 apartments, noting the count had increased modestly from 18 to 20 units compared with an application filed in late 2023, according to a separate San Francisco YIMBY report. The current filing instead describes an 18-unit building, and the available records do not explain why the reported figures differ between the two filings.
Who's Behind the Project
The current property owner is listed only as 425 W MACARTHUR LLC, and no specific individuals or developers could be identified as the project's sponsor, the report notes. That leaves the people actually driving the proposal forward something of a mystery for now, at least based on what's publicly documented.
Despite the anonymity behind the ownership entity, the pitch to planners leans heavily on location. Future residents would be within walking distance of transportation options along Telegraph Avenue and Broadway, including the nearby MacArthur BART station, the outlet reports.
Fitting Into a Changing Corridor
The project represents a significant increase in density compared with the current site, which today holds just a two-story duplex. Still, the report characterizes the proposed building's relatively low height and total number of units as consistent with other buildings already present in the neighborhood.
The MacArthur Boulevard corridor has seen larger housing pushes before. A revised five-story apartment building at 820 West MacArthur Boulevard, about half a mile away, won approval back in 2023 with 166 studio units, 51 of them set aside as affordable for moderate-income households earning between 80 and 120 percent of the area median income, according to an earlier San Francisco YIMBY report. That project also included bicycle parking for 51 bikes and no car parking at all.
Citywide, the pace of new housing applications has been notable. A City of Oakland staff report indicates that 282 applications for new housing development were submitted to the city in 2025, proposing a total of 1,007 new units, including 709 multifamily units, according to a document from the City of Oakland. For now, the exact fate of the Mosswood duplex, and the final shape of whatever replaces it, remains tied to a filing process still working its way through the city.
