Commercial asphalt paving in Oakland, CA

Downtown Oakland streets are public right-of-way, busy with traffic, transit, deliveries and pedestrians. Work there falls under City of Oakland Department of Transportation requirements, and closing several streets at once isn't an option.

At 226 13th Street, the Lydian Apartments development covering a full city block, we ground and repaved four city streets totaling 35,350 SF to 2 inches and remarked them with thermoplastic in four days. The key was keeping public access open at every stage while meeting the City's requirements.

The general contractor's project manager credited our phasing plan with making the job work. That's typical downtown: the paving is straightforward, and the planning is the hard part.

The industrial land along the estuary and through West Oakland sits on low, soft ground. Pavement there depends more than usual on a solid aggregate base and a subgrade that can really carry the load.

It's also where a site walk tells you the least. Conditions show up once the old pavement comes off, so on a removal and replacement project near the waterfront, we talk through ahead of time what happens if the subgrade isn't what everyone expected.

Oakland has a lot of retail storefronts, older commercial buildings and public accommodations, and much of their parking was built before today's accessibility standards.

Under California's Unruh Civil Rights Act, non-compliant conditions carry statutory damages of at least $4,000 per violation, plus attorney's fees. Exterior accessibility, including stall slopes, access aisles, curb ramps and path of travel, is the most visible part of that exposure. Our ADA improvements page covers what the fixes involve.

We've also worked at the Earth Circles Counseling Center on Santa Clara Avenue in Oakland, where the client thanked our team for "a job well done, with attention to detail and courtesy."