Micro Apartment Complex Attempts to Take Bay Area Residents by Surprise

By Alex Girda, Associate Editor

It’s all about one-bite appetizers and shot-size cocktails these days, and now it looks like less is more in the living department as well. 300-square-foot apartments offer a frugal living space, but student housing developer Patrick Kennedy seems confident that those who crave city life above everything else will embrace the micro-apartment concept he is proposing.

His company, Panoramic Interests, has 13 mixed-use infill projects in the Berkeley area, and for the last 10 years it has been one of the largest landlords for UC Berkeley students. The company has partnered up with Zeta Communities for this particular project.

Getting ready to be opened in San Francisco’s South of Market district, the prefabricated building will consist of 23 compact units built on a 3,750-square-foot lot at 38 Harriet Street. The idea is to get the Zeta Communities-designed units assembled as soon as possible from the company’s Sacramento factory. The apartment building will be unveiled in October.

Zeta Communities provides developers with construction technologies that minimize design and construction costs, in this case contributing the prefabricated components of the upcoming SoMa micro apartment building. As previously mentioned, Zeta will ship out its Sacramento-built units and assemble them at the 38 Harriet Street site in time for the breakthrough complex’s October opening. The potential success of developer Patrick Kennedy’s gamble on smaller units for city-centric residents could usher in a new era not only for the crowded Bay Area, but space-deficient cities across the United States.

Photo courtesy of panoramicinterests.com.