32 Home Hillside Neighborhood Site Plan — Oakland

The 4-acre Siena Hill property occupies a narrow, steep ribbon of hillside sandwiched between a major street on the down-slope side and single-family homes above. The major street, Keller Avenue, also has a steep cross slope along the frontage, making site access very difficult. 

The property owner’s program called for single-family homes in two unit “duet style” buildings. The owner came to Arnold Mammarella to develop a new site plan for the planned unit development after having difficulty in developing a site plan that did not result in overwhelming site retaining walls and overly tall rear facades on the down-slope side of structures. Both of these issues created problems in the development obtaining city approvals. Since the duet homes where already designed, the task required using these buildings with minimal building design adjustments.

The solution started with the strategic decision to move the entry point at the high side of the site along Keller Avenue and create a double loaded private street that flowed with the hillside’s contour. This approach netted 32 homes and 101 well-screened parking spaces while minimizing retaining walls and balancing grading. A large planting island in the private street was used to split the street into upper and lower drives near the entry point to give more space between houses and create more visual character. The planting island, along with landscaped pedestrian pathways that lead to the public street below, were part of an overall site design and landscape concept accented with native oaks and redwoods. The concept was intended to create a collective neighborhood ambiance reminiscent of 1920’s era Oakland/Berkeley hillside neighborhoods.