This building wants to be the Swiss army knife of urban living

To shape the new high-rise tower he’s built in Oakland, California, real estate developer Colin Behring looked to the megacities of Asia. His site, on the edge of downtown and just above a station for the regional BART rail system, had all the makings of the kinds of central city developments he was familiar with in Shanghai, Tokyo, and Hong Kong, where transit access is the enabling factor behind dense populations and concentrated urban services and amenities.



“They figured out how to put massive density on top of transit,” says Behring, CEO of the Bay Area-based developer Behring Co. “California is a little slower.”



[Photo: Behring Companies]



The building he’s developed, 1900 Broadway , is trying to push California—and the U.S.—closer to an Asian-style urban development model. His project is a 39-story residential tower, with 452 rental apartments outfitted with space-saving robotic furniture , four floors of coworking offices, lounges, and other tenant amenities including an on-site fleet of more than 100 electric vehicles and scooters available to residents on demand through an app. In combination with the BART station, it’s an attempt to create a transit-first dense urban neighborhood packed into a single building.



“What we’re doing here is really just going all-in on urban infill, mixed use, truly integrated lifestyles in urban living,” he says.



Behring is a third-generation real estate developer. His grandfather started the family business building large mixed use and master planned projects, like golf course communities and office parks. “You build all this stuff together to benefit from all of the economies of scale, to have it close, and have it convenient,” Behring says of those projects.



[Photo: Behring Companies]



Behring sees this project in Oakland as a high-density, transit-oriented version of the types of agglomerations his grandfather built. “Previously mixed use was kind of like a wedding cake. You had apartments, you had a hotel, you had office, you had some retail, but they were all separate,” Behring says. There might be one owner of the real estate, but every entity within it was operated separately, and sometimes at strategic odds with one another. “It was stacked on top of each other, but it wasn’t integrated.”



[Photo: Behring Companies]



The Disney World of living



Behring’s approach with 1900 Broadway is to bring all these different uses under the same umbrella, with concentrated management and a proprietary app controlling access to services. Residents who make use of the coworking facilities, mobility options, and other on-site amenities qualify for discounts across the board. This integration, Behring says, is reminiscent of the way Las Vegas casino-hotel complexes work, or package deals at Disney theme parks and hotels. “They keep you in the ecosystem,” he says.



[Photo: Behring Companies]



Part of the way Behring hopes to emulate those examples is by providing a deep set of features that people want, all on site and easily accessible. That includes a 100-car fleet of Teslas, 47,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor amenities, and a pet grooming facility, among others. Behring says the size of the building makes it feasible to offer these spaces and services available to residents, though many are not free. Decoupling the cost of some amenities, like the use of the EVs, brings rents lower overall. “We’re able to get the unit cost per person down significantly to where you can get a whole lot more stuff for a lot less money,” Behring says.



[Photo: Behring Companies]



Rents for studio apartments start at $1,669, which is slightly higher than the $1,607 median studio rent in Oakland, according to data from Zumper . But Behring isn’t necessarily after the mass market. He’s geared the building’s particular type of mixed use to be attractive not just to individual renters but also to companies and startups that are seeking campus-like spaces that can appeal to talent. With apartments that can shape-shift from bedroom to office, collaboration space in the co-working floors, and the same style of available perks offered in the offices of leading tech companies, the building is attempting to be an all-in-one package. Leasing for the building is just getting underway, but Behring says there’s been significant interest from companies looking for this type of space.



[Photo: Behring Companies]



He thinks it’s a model that can spread. Behring’s company is in talks with other sites in the region and other cities, especially tech-centric markets. “I believe that 1900 Broadway and this full stack model eventually will change how people look at their built environment and how much they’re integrating into these real estate offerings,” Behring says. “It will change things. But certain sites will adapt faster and easier than others.”