Dorm or luxury hotel? Peek inside UC Berkeley’s new $300M student housing complex (2024)

When it opens its doors on Aug. 21, the Helen Diller Anchor House will likely be the most luxurious residential building in all of Berkeley.

A grand two-story lobby boasts ceilings that rise to 41 feet, custom metalwork surrounding the glass entry and a dramatic steel and oak stairway. Polished concrete and a profusion of white oak paneling are among the high-end materials used throughout, along with custom furniture and classic pieces by the likes of Hans Wegner, Carl Hansen and George Nakashima.

The 14-story, 180-foot building is also one of Berkeley’s tallest, providing jaw-dropping views in every direction. Other upscale amenities include a game room, rooftop garden, two terraces, an interior courtyard and an 8,600-square-foot fitness center.

These apartments, however, are not available to the general public. The Anchor House was created specifically for transfer students, who will inhabit all of its 772 beds in 244 fully furnished apartments, with a room in a two-bedroom unit renting for about $2,000 a month, similar to nearby student housing.

The $300 million building is the largest gift in UC Berkeley’s history, covering all of the dormitory’s planning, architecture, design, construction and all the furnishings.

It did not come without controversy, as Berkeleyside reported in 2021.

Anchor House was built at the expense of a landmarked garage and an eight-unit, 112-year-old rent-controlled building on Walnut Street that was torn down despite opposition from both the city and citizens groups frustrated that Cal wasn’t replacing the rent-controlled units, as it would be required to do in Berkeley if it were a private developer. Out of options, the last tenants agreed to leave the building in 2021, receiving relocation assistance.

The Helen Diller Family Foundation, which provided the unprecedented gift, has been called out for its past donations to far-right causes in both the U.S. and Israel, including support of an Israeli nonprofit that provides legal support to Jewish settlers looking to take over Palestinians’ homes.

And some critics have said the building is symbolic of UC Berkeley’s unbridled expansion into the city and that the money spent on lavish amenities would be better used to build more housing for students.

Anchor House is part of a housing initiative begun by former UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ in 2017 to double the amount of student housing at the university, which has historically been short on beds, providing housing for only 23% of its students, the lowest rate in the UC system.

Later this month the university is opening the xučyun ruwway Apartments, with 761 beds for grad students in Albany. And last month construction began at People’s Park, where Cal plans to build a 1,100-bed student housing complex in time for the fall 2027 semester. That project is expected to cost $400 million.

Anchor House is the first donor-funded student housing at Cal in 79 years, according to the university. Rosalie Stern paid for the construction of Stern Hall in 1942. John D. Rockefeller funded the International House in 1930. The building is owned, managed and operated by UC Berkeley, though the Helen Diller Family Foundation still has say in how the dorm is run.

A Berkeleyside reporter and photographer toured the new facility on July 30.

Located at 1950 Oxford St. and encompassing the entire block bordered by Oxford and Walnut streets, Berkeley Way and University Avenue, the ebony brick building is distinguished by several other firsts. The Anchor House is the first within UC Berkeley to specifically serve the transfer student population and contains the university’s first dedicated area for commuter students, where they can gather in a living-room-like environment and store their belongings in the 231 lockers provided.

The Anchor House is also the university’s first dormitory in downtown Berkeley.

“The building is absolutely stunning,” said John Caner, CEO of the Downtown Berkeley Association, who toured the building on July 25. “For years that last block of University has been a really sorry block. It’s such a shame because it’s the gateway to the university. There wasn’t a sense of arrival.”

Five new retail businesses are slated for storefronts, all of which are expected to be filled in the coming months. So far, tenants include second locations for the Cal Student Store and Transfer Student Resource Center. The Anchor House website listed two incoming tenants as San Francisco-based restaurants Cafe De Casa, a Brazilian restaurant, and Palmetto Superfoods, with an açaí-based menu, but Gibson said plans are still underway.

The university estimates that revenues generated by rents will raise approximately $8 million annually, which will fund 400 annual scholarships for Pell-Grant eligible (low-income) students, selected on the basis of academic and personal achievement, said Kyle Gibson, a university spokesperson.

The project brought together some of the most prestigious names in architecture and design: the New York-based Morris Adjmi Architects, known for its high-end residential, commercial and hotel projects; Brand Bureau, a New York interior design firm; and the San Francisco landscape architect Andrea Cochran.

Like most high-concept, high-end housing that has hotel-like amenities — part of the foundation’s vision for the project — the entire complex was designed to be a “transformative” experience that tends to residents’ emotional, mental and physical needs. So there is an abundance of light and air via two terraces, the rooftop garden and small outdoor terraces on every three floors. Every apartment has natural light and operable windows.

The building’s earthy palette and materials — the dark brick, gray metal and prolific use of white oak paneling and floors throughout — were chosen to reflect a Berkeley and Northern California aesthetic, Gibson said. Adding to the university’s portfolio of architectural styles built over the years, this one is unapologetically contemporary.

“This place is nicer than Ritz Carltons I’ve seen,” said David Masenten, a principal at Berkeley’s ELS Architecture and Urban Design, and a Downtown Business Association board member who toured the building on July 25.

Tailored to transfer students’ needs

“The donor,” Jaclyn Safier, the president of The Helen Diller Foundation, who rarely grants interviews, “was particularly interested in funding housing for transfer students,” Gibson said.

Jaclyn Safier is the daughter of Sanford and Hellen Diller, who were both Cal alumni. Sanford Diller created the foundation in 1999 in honor of his wife. The foundation is supported by Prometheus Real Estate Group, which Sanford Diller founded in 1965 and is now the largest private owner of multifamily properties in the Bay Area. Jaclyn Safier is CEO of Prometheus.

Transfers make up 20% of Cal’s undergraduate population. Ninety-five-percent of them come from California community colleges; about a third are from underrepresented minority groups; 43% are from low-income households; and 45% are first-generation college students.

“They face an enormous amount of challenges: integrating into the university, establishing community and establishing their academic programs and success,” Gibson said. They also tend to come from places farther away than the average student.

To discover their needs, the university surveyed transfer students. Most transfer students tend to be older than incoming freshmen and prefer more of an adult-style, apartment living rather than the residence hall model many freshmen experience as a college rite of passage. Because they’ve missed out on those first two years of bonding, these students also wish to quickly build community with their peers.

“They overwhelmingly wanted apartments with kitchens,” Gibson said, as well as smaller, individual bedrooms. Every bedroom in the building is for a single occupancy. “Everything here is geared to this population that is older and transitioning into the adult world of apartment-style living.”

To that end, the largest number of units, 164 of them, are four-bedroom, two-bath units. There are also 30 two-bedroom one-bath apartments, 3 three-bedroom two-bath apartments and 47 studio apartments, which are prioritized for students with accessibility needs.

The residential experience

Students will enter the residential section of the building, just off the main lobby, using their electronic ID card. Like a high-end hotel lobby, the residential entry has a large central seating area and high ceilings. A light well from the interior courtyard above floods the room with light. Custom built-in wooden furniture and restaurant-like booths encourage gathering. There’s an on-call concierge desk. A live-in staff that will be available 24/7 has been trained in dealing with residents, even advised on how to respond to requests via email.

As part of the gift agreement between UC Berkeley and the Helen Diller Family Foundation, Safier will play a role in how the new building will be operated. Safier is a permanent member of its Project Advisory Board, which will ensure the facility is maintained to her expectations, which include how to clean communal areas and how staff should interact with residents. “When you see a resident or fellow team member, acknowledge them and give a courteous and professional greeting,” reads a portion of the gift agreement. “Make eye contact and smile. Say ‘hello,’ ask how they are doing or wish them a great day!”

Residential units are sleekly designed and include such amenities as walnut veneer and Arktek Aalto tables near the beds. Custom-built wooden desks were built under — and run the length of — the windows. Each unit includes a washer and dryer, doing away with the need to run to the laundry room. Residents lucky enough to live on the west side of the building have sweeping views of the bay that on a clear day include the Golden Gate Bridge.

An important part of the overall concept was to provide plenty of gathering spaces “so students have places to go outside their rooms,” Gibson said.

Many rooms serve dual purposes. In the mailroom, for example, mailboxes are incorporated into the walls, allowing the space to be a game room, with two basketball games, three pinball machines and Skee-Ball and Pac-Man games. Two foosball tables feature opponents dressed in Cal and Stanford soccer uniforms.

The fitness center contains wellness and meditation areas, state-of-the-art exercise equipment, rubberized floors, a loft for classes and a “Serenity Studio” for yoga, meditation and other types of “quiet wellness,” Gibson said, where windows open onto the courtyard for natural ventilation. When the dorm opens, the center will only be for residents but may be available to the wider Cal community in the future.

Every floor has smaller lounge spaces, but there are two double-height outdoor terraces, both of which are on the building’s southeast corner and face the university. One is on the second floor and features swing-like sofas, tropical plants and small trees. On the 13th floor, the Sun Terrace boasts citrus trees and an arbor-like roof that is open to the elements.

The Hill is an indoor gathering place where a shuffleboard court is laid into the flooring, not far from a mini kitchen. The actual “hill” is a series of deep wooden steps that double as theater-style seating for movie nights or other events.

Sprinkled throughout the building are details that connect residents to Cal history, including vintage yearbooks dating to the early 1900s students can inspect in the building’s lobby.

One thing Helen Diller Anchor House does not have: parking. UC Berkeley students have one of the lowest undergraduate driving rates in the entire UC system, Gibson said. Plus, there’s plenty of mass transit available nearby, including the Downtown Berkeley BART station.

Students who wish to live in the Anchor House must apply through Berkeley Housing and are selected on a lottery system. Prices for the apartments range from $1,995 per month for a single bed in any of the two, three or four-bedroom apartments to $2,169 per month for a studio unit. All rents, which are on a May-September leasing calendar, include all utilities and financial aid is available to students who qualify.

“We price our units to be at or below market (depending on unit-type) and any excess revenues go 100% to student financial aid,” said Adam Ratliff, spokesperson for Student Affairs, which operates campus housing and sets rental rates.

According to apartments.com, average rent in Berkeley for an unfurnished, 569-square-foot unfurnished apartment is $2,242. Unfurnished studios average about $1,999. Ratliff noted that such prices do not include utilities and the amenities that are available through many types of university housing.

Fulfilling other university needs

While eight stories of the building are entirely residential, it also fulfills other university needs. So parts of the building provide additional areas for other campus programs that will be open to members of the Cal community as well as residents.

A 6,800-square-foot interior courtyard designed by Andrea Cochran divides the space into an area for residents on one side and the Cal community on the other.

The public side features overhead wiring that holds lighting and will eventually be filled in with Boston Ivy, which is beginning to creep up some of the building’s columns. The residential side includes a synthetic grass lawn, small trees like Japanese Maple and two dramatic, 13-story, 145-foot vertical gardens created by David Brenner of Berkeley’s Habitat Horticulture that flank the space, rising up along the buildings. Together the gardens contain some 20,000 plants.

Dividing the two communities is a wall with three arches, constructed with bricks from the former university garage on Oxford Street, which was torn down in 2021 to make way for the dorm, eliciting a public outcry. A city landmark, the garage was designed in 1930 as the Richfield Oil Service by the architect Walter Ratcliff. The university seeks to recognize the former garage in two other ways: Its arches inspired the metalwork at the building’s entrance and a plaque on the building’s northeast corner describes the former garage’s architectural merits.

The Berkeley Art Studio West will have a second-floor Maker’s Space to display and make art (it even has a kiln) to supplement its existing location at Cesar Chavez Student Center. The Pantry is a fully equipped kitchen, social space and library.

The Rausser College of Natural Resources will be operating the Nutritional Sciences Teaching Kitchen, a professional teaching kitchen with rows of individual work stations where cooking classes and nutritional counseling will be offered. A rooftop vegetable garden that’s open to residents will also provide fresh fruits and vegetables for the kitchen.

The Anchor House includes two event spaces, which Gibson said the university is short on. The Sequoia Room is decorated with a large-scale reproduction of a Wayne Thiebaud cake painting and lined with wood from a 2010 felled tree from the Sequoia National Park. The Venue, a larger space, features its own reception area and northwest-facing terrace. Both rooms have kitchens and movable furniture to suit various configurations.

The long, winding — and controversial — road to completion

While the new Anchor House is being welcomed by some community members, it comes after years of controversy and continuing push-back.

The city of Berkeley long took issue with UC’s expansion plans, projected to add 12,000 people in the next 13 years, but agreed not to file a lawsuit about the university’s long-range development plan or to oppose the Anchor House or People’s Park projects after striking a deal where Cal agreed to pay more than $4 million annually for its use of city services. Because UC Berkeley is part of the state’s University of California system, whatever land it owns is considered state property that is subject to state law.

An organization called Berkeley Citizens for a Better Plan sued the Regents of the University of California in 2021 over the university’s expansion plans, and won. An Alameda County Superior Court judge ruled that UC must consider reducing enrollment as a way to protect the community from the impacts of a minor development project the university planned at Hearst and La Loma avenues. But freezes on the university’s enrollment were recently overturned by the legislature.

In 2023-24, some 45,699 students were enrolled at UC Berkeley, made up of 33,078 undergraduates and 12,621 graduate students. Yet only 8,509 students were in campus housing. For the 2024-25 school year, buoyed by the Anchor House and xučyun ruwway, the university anticipates its student residents in campus housing will increase to 10,000.

In making way for Anchor House, the removal of the rent-controlled 1921 Walnut St. apartment prompted the largest uproar from community activists.

The owner of the apartment building offered the eight-unit building to the university, which it bought in 2018 and expanded the size of the project. At one point the city floated an idea to move the apartment, which never came to fruition.

In 2021, the university hired a relocation team to help move tenants into nearby apartments and provided moving assistance and relocation packages that started at $50,000 per unit and went into the six figures. Berkeleyside attempted to reach former tenants of 1921 Walnut St. for this story but was not successful.

The Berkeley City Council and Rent Board opposed the building’s demise, as did the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association and Associated Students of the University of California.

“The university has displaced Berkeley residents from affordable housing and it’s shameful, especially since the new housing that will be built will be for short-term renters,” rent board commissioner Paola Laverde told Berkeleyside in 2021. “The university is replacing long-term housing with short-term housing.”

The Helen Diller Family Foundation has also come under fire.

Over the years, the Dillers have donated more than $1 billion to Bay Area and global causes, including $500 million to help UCSF build a hospital and tens of millions to UC Berkeley since 2002, in addition to funding Anchor House.

Before Sanford Diller’s death in 2018, he directed the foundation to make donations to right-wing organizations, including Project Veritas, which uses secret recordings and deceptive video editing to target groups like Planned Parenthood, ACORN and the Washington Post.

Under his leadership, the foundation also supported Canary Mission, which publishes the personal information of students it deems antisemitic or critical of Israel; in the last year, it’s doxxed students at UC Berkeley.

Safier has denounced Canary Mission’s tactics and said that right-wing causes made up a small fraction of the foundation’s $1 billion in gifts.

Prometheus has also donated millions in recent years to defeat two pro rent-control measures on the California ballot.

Despite its mission to help underserved student populations, Anchor House has its detractors, among them Leila H. Moncharsh, BAHA’s former president and current treasurer.

“We again repeat that the use of space and resources for private kitchens and laundry facilities in each unit, yoga rooms, etc., could have been used to provide housing for many more transfer students (whether disadvantaged or not) within the same footprint,” she said.

Berkeleyside Managing Editor Zac Farber contributed reporting to this story.