UC Berkeley has identified its next two sites for student housing development at 2200 Bancroft Way and 2302 Channing Way. Between both developments, preliminary estimates suggest at least 2,700 new beds.

Kyle Gibson, director of communications for campus Capital Strategies, noted in an email that the Chancellor’s Housing Task Force established student housing goals in 2017, aiming for the construction of more than 8,800 new beds.

“Those 2,700+ beds, combined with the 3,500 beds already completed and currently in development, will get us more than two-thirds of the way toward achieving our student housing goal of 8,800 new beds,” Gibson said in an email.

He said the 8,800 new beds, which would essentially double existing campus housing, would meet the task force’s student housing goals: two years of housing for entering freshmen, one year for entering transfer students and one year for entering graduate students.

Since 2017, Gibson noted several sites have been developed or are in the planning or development phase of construction.

These sites include Blackwell Hall, Intersection Apartments, Anchor House, Albany Village Apartments and People’s Park, according to Gibson.

“While these projects are substantial steps forward, combined they will only achieve about 40% of our student housing goal once completed,” Gibson said in the email. “In order to reach our student housing goal it is not a question of which sites to develop — we must use them all.”

To achieve the remaining 60% of the student housing goal of more than 5,000 new beds, Gibson noted that it would require developing every site identified for new housing in campus’s Long Range Development Plan, or LRDP.

The Bancroft and Channing sites were identified in the 2021 LRDP for new housing and are “in the queue” for development, Gibson said. In March, Gibson added, Capital Strategies issued a request for qualifications seeking proposals from architects to work on design concepts of the housing sites.

“It will take several years to design these projects, conduct environmental reviews, identify funding, and receive necessary approvals from the UC Board of Regents, before construction begins,” Gibson said in the email.

Gibson noted preliminary estimates for the start of construction are between 2025 and 2030, with more precise timelines to be released as the projects develop.

Once construction begins, Gibson estimated the developments will be completed in about two and a half to three years.

Although the Bancroft site will replace a small office building and a parking lot while the Channing site will replace tennis courts and a parking lot, according to a campus student housing website page, Gibson added that the campus is “confident” that it will find ways to accommodate the existing uses at other locations.

He explained that other identified new housing sites have existing uses that require more resources to relocate or are located at the Clark Kerr Campus, where legal covenants restrict new housing construction until after 2032.

“Part of the multi-year planning and development process for these projects, leading to the eventual start of construction several years from now, will be determining how and where to accommodate existing uses currently at these sites,” Gibson said in the email. “This will take some time and the programs at these locations will be kept informed and involved during that process.”