01
Infill housing
New homes on underused parcels — missing-middle, multifamily, and mixed-income projects that add density where the city has already paid for the sidewalks, the transit, and the schools.
Community-focused development · Oakland, CA
We build with the neighborhood, not on top of it.
The Town Development Group is an Oakland real estate development company working block by block — housing people can afford to stay in, ground floors that keep local businesses open, and projects shaped by the neighbors who live next to them.
Local
Oakland-based and Oakland-focused. We work where we live, and we answer to the same neighbors you do.
Long-term
We build to hold. Our name stays on the block long after the ribbon is cut — so the details have to be right.
Accountable
Community input before entitlement, not after. What we hear changes what we draw.
What we do
Three ways we put buildings back to work.
Every project starts from the same question: what does this block actually need? The answer decides the shape of the deal — not the other way around.
02
Adaptive reuse & rehab
Vacant storefronts, tired warehouses, and older housing stock brought back into service — rebuilt to last another fifty years instead of being scraped for something generic.
03
Community partnerships
Joint ventures and development advisory for churches, nonprofits, and local owners who hold land and want to build on it — without having to sell it to do so.
Selected work
Two projects, named.
Both in West Oakland. These are where everything else on this site stops being a claim and becomes a building — and they are what we expect to be judged on.
The Forge
- Neighborhood
- West Oakland
- Program
- Community campus
- Status
- Coming soon
“A community campus in West Oakland where makers, artists, families, and entrepreneurs come together to build the future.” Wellness and movement, maker spaces, workforce training, and rooms a neighbor can actually book — four programs sharing one campus.
The Forge keeps its own site at theforgeoakland.org. See the programs and its reported impact.
ZOWA
- Neighborhood
- West Oakland
- Program
- To be announced
- Status
- To be announced
West Oakland has spent decades on the receiving end of other people's plans — freeways driven through it, redevelopment done around it, and lately capital arriving with a thesis about what the neighborhood is going to become. ZOWA starts from the opposite question: what does this block want to keep?
Program, partners, and timeline will be published here as they are confirmed — and not before. We would rather this page stay short than fill it with numbers we cannot yet stand behind.
Our commitment
Four things we hold ourselves to.
Development happens to neighborhoods far more often than it happens with them. These are the working rules we use to be the other kind of developer — and the ones you should hold us to.
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We talk first
Neighbors, merchants, and block clubs hear from us before drawings go to the City — and their notes change the plan.
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We hire locally
Oakland contractors, Oakland trades, Oakland apprentices. Local hiring is written into how we scope work, not added at the end.
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We keep ground floors alive
Street-level space sized and priced for small, independent, neighborhood-serving businesses.
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We stay
Maintenance budgets, responsive management, and a phone number that still works in year ten.
Have a site, a building, or a block in mind?
Whether you own land, represent a congregation or a nonprofit, or simply want to know what is being planned near you — we would like to hear from you.