The Enclave Dormitory on 2501 Haste Street at Telegraph Avenue in Southside Berkeley — once described as a “Moorish-Tudor fever dream” — was sold in mid-July for $113 million, Alameda County documents confirm.
The Mercury News first reported earlier this month that a Goldman Sachs-owned affiliate bought the 55-unit dormitory property in an all-cash deal recorded on July 13.
The sellers were Irvine-based LBA Realty and Point Richmond-based West Builders, which bought the property in 2013 from Ken Sarachan, who owns Rasputin Records and multiple properties in the Telegraph Avenue area.
According to the Alameda County Assessor’s Office, the property was recently valued at about $57 million â half the current sale price. The office is still processing the sale to update ownership records.
Enclave Dormitory was unveiled in February 2020 after a two-decade saga culminating in the original architect, Kirk Peterson, ultimately leaving the project. It passed from Oakland-based firm Jarvis Architects to the final designers, LCA Architects, who created it with West Builders.
“I wanted to make art. I wanted to do a correct, authentic, historicist building,” Peterson said during the opening in 2020. â”Now it looks like crap. It looks god-awful.â”
The building opened in the fall of 2020 for UC Berkeley graduate students and still attracts gaping passersby on the bustling corner of Telegraph Avenue. Some find it whimsical and stop to take selfies that attempt to capture the hulking structure.
It has a capacity for 254 people with a mix of 4-, 5- and 6-unit apartments and openings for commercial properties on its ground floor.
