This week, the Urban Land Institute (ULI) named Casa Arabella as one of twelve winning developments for its coveted 2021 Awards of Excellence for the Americas region!

Casa Arabella is the first phase of expansion to the nationally-recognized Fruitvale Transit Village in east Oakland. The 94-unit affordable housing project includes flats and townhomes for families, as well as dedicated units and case management services for formerly homeless U.S. military veterans. Nearly all of the project’s units open onto one of three courtyards, and the stacked, two-story townhomes along East 12th Street include ground-level patios, balconies, and even birdhouses.

Apace with the award announcement, development partners East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC) and The Unity Council released a wonderful five-minute featurette on the story of the project from vision to reality:

Building Partnerships: The Casa Arabella Story from EBALDC on Vimeo.

The transit-oriented project was designed in conjunction with extensive community engagement, and includes an accessible pathway along its BART frontage and a pedestrian paseo facing a future housing project.

“ULI began the Awards for Excellence program in 1979 to recognize truly superior development efforts in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors,” notes ULI’s press release. “Winning projects represent the highest standards of achievement in the land use profession.” The ULI Americas award recognizes excellence in the entire development process, in which design and architecture play a significant role. Casa Arabella was made possible by the project’s development partners, Oakland-based EBALDC and Fruitvale-based The Unity Council, with critical project support from Tableau Development.

In May, ULI announced the project as one of 23 Americas-region finalists. Casa Arabella was the only California project to become a finalist in this awards cycle. Winners were chosen among the finalists following interviews with each project’s development team. The twelve Americas winners will compete against winners from Europe and Asia for the ULI Global Awards for Excellence. Results will be announced in October at the organization’s Fall Meeting.

Photo by David Wakely. Main courtyard landscape architecture by PGAdesign.