The BART Board of Directors on Thursday approved moving the transit agency’s headquarters to another building in Oakland because the cost of leasing the current space is increasing and BART will save money by buying a new building.
BART’s current headquarters is at 300 Lakeside Drive, but its lease expires in July 2021 and the cost of leasing the 369,000 square feet of office space on 14 floors with a board room in a separate building is set to go up by 60 percent.
The BART board voted Thursday to move the headquarters to 2150 Webster St. in the spring of 2021. Both the current and future headquarters are near the 19th Street train station in uptown Oakland.
BART Board President Bevan Dufty noted that the new building will have a ground-floor board room that is more accessible to the public, and the 244,000 square feet across 10 floors will “spur BART administrative staff to
downsize their footprint.”
The $142 million purchase of the building and $85 million in interior construction is being financed by a 25-year sales tax bond, and the agency says it will save at least $210 million over that 25-year period by purchasing the building rather than staying at the Lakeside Drive location.
BART has had its headquarters in the current location since 2003.
It was forced to move to the leased space after the original headquarters building at the Lake Merritt station was deemed to be seismically unfit.
14 comments
Surprise, surprise, surprise.
Wow astonishment that they would approve to spend more tax money
Will wonders never cease
Will not be surprised when the top few are given once again bonuses with our money for spending more of our money
Ahhh the perks of a defunked state who prefers corruption
Not one politician or govorner questioning ???
If the current hdqtrs is near Lake Merritt station and the building is seismically unstable, what does that mean about the Lake Merritt station?!!
In other news the sky is blue, and the ground is hard 🙂
They could have seismically retrofit the building at the Lake Merritt Station for a fraction of that, but they certainly would never let the desire to save a buck interfere with their tear to spend the taxpayers money. They might have had enough left over to install cheater-proof fare gates at all the stations which would at least produce some income. Guess the only way they are ever going to make it fair is to let everybody ride free on the taxpayer’s dime.
Love how BART CAN APPROVE it. hopefully the voters vote it DOWN!!
BART prob
Too bad BART can’t be deemed “fiscally unfit” so that we could get a private, non-govt. agency to run the system instead of the current money-sucking, politically run waste of space that we currently have now.
Are they required by law to have their HQ in Oakland? If not, then as good stewards of tax payer money, they should have sought a lower priced alternative to expensive Oakland real estate. There’s a large plot of land next to their Antioch station which would still have put them next to one of their stations. Buying the land and building new construction there would have been far far far more cost effective.
I approve as long as the new HQ comes with janitors who make $275K/yr while taking multiple hour-long breaks in a closet.
And then I REALLY approve if the new HQ comes with taxpayer-funded security cameras where footage of crimes won’t be released to the public because of “racially insensitive commentary.”
No shock at all that Bart would buy themselves a building for over Two hundred million dollars, all the while crying poor to raise prices on the trains and in their parking lots. What is perplexing is the amount of people who voted for the propositions and taxes to provide for this nonsense…
Bay Area Rapid Failure (BARF)
Uh oh! I see another bond issue and tax increase coming to give BART more and more money! Has anyone notice what the BART trains look like lately? They look like old worn out jalopies. And the BART stations? And what about the diesel train system between Antioch and Pittsburgh(instead of just extending the existing track out further from Bay Point). I wonder how much the BART board got kicked back and payed off on that one. Providing a safe modern and efficient transportation system is BARTs absolute last priority.
I can’t wait until they build the new bart headquarters. Because we all can….
*Go urinate on the furniture,
*Shoot-up in the elevators,
*Cut the Catalytic converters off their cars (twice!)
*steal their bicycles(twice!),
*break the elevators,
*redirect them on 45 minute bus bridge on their way into the office,
*sit in the lobby with our hands in our pants talking dirty to the women,
*lock the doors to all the restrooms
*Force them to stand UP-AGAINST their unwashed co-workers for their entire shift,
*play inaudible announcements over the office PA system,
*place a layer of hair gel on all the windows,
*Provide a effective super aggressive police department that can instantly charge them if they violate the smallest parking rules,
*Provide a totally ineffective police force that allows repeated crimes against property/persons/fare evasion to take place right in front of officers!
What a wonderful office that would be! I can hardly wait!!
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