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OAKLAND — Construction crews last week began digging up a surface parking lot at 17th and Broadway, where the first new skyscraper in about a decade will rise.

At 33 stories, the Lennar project will be Oakland’s third-tallest building and tallest residential tower. And it will soon have company. As the neighborhoods around downtown have grown over the past decade with restaurants and watering holes, a second wave of new homes is coming, causing some people to worry who will be welcome and who will be priced out.

More than 2,000 market-rate units are in the pipeline within downtown, not far from Uber’s new headquarters at 20th and Broadway. If all are built, city officials say they could add thousands of residents and fill out the city’s skyline. Coupled with several new commercial developments, downtown Oakland is growing up.

There is no question the city needs more housing, but will its growth create an even bigger divide between wealthy and working-class residents?

The new homes are coming as Oakland embarks on Mayor Libby Schaaf’s plan to build 17,000 new housing units and preserve another 17,000 units for low-income renters over the next eight years. Released a year ago, a report accompanying the plan found that 22.5 percent of Oakland households are vulnerable to being pushed out and more than half of renters spend 50 percent or more of their earnings on housing.

Assistant City Administrator Claudia Cappio said many of the new or planned residential buildings won’t displace residents or tenants because they are going on top of or replacing parking lots. The list includes the 33-story tower at 1640 Broadway; a 40-story building at the site of Merchants parking garage at 1314 Franklin St.; and another at Telegraph Avenue and 20th Street that will replace a two-tiered parking garage and a diner. A 2015 report by the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, or SPUR, found 40 acres of surface parking available in downtown.

Related Articles Report: Oakland among nation’s top office markets “People have been saying for years we are just around the corner. Well, it looks like we turned the corner,” said Robert Ogilvie, Oakland director for SPUR.

The construction site at 1640 Broadway in some ways represents the long wait for more high-rise homes in the city’s center along BART lines and near downtown offices. The development was first approved in the early 2000s, and like other projects that didn’t make the wave of new residential construction launched during former Gov. Jerry Brown’s term as mayor, stalled during the recession, Cappio said.

Despite what some see as benefits to the overall housing supply, Jeff Levin, policy director at East Bay Housing Organizations, said the downtown buildings offer little to no benefit to low-income residents.

Buyers or renters will have to earn hefty paychecks to afford the market-rate prices. Only two of the projects will include some units for low-income earners: One building in the Webster cluster will set aside 5 percent, and the Franklin tower will include 5 or 10 percent, said Robert Merkamp, development planning manager in the city’s planning department.

Levin said the percentage of low-income units should be higher.

“It’s way out of reach for the typical Oakland renter,” Levin said. “Building a lot of high-end apartments won’t make housing cheaper for low-income working people.”

The 1640 project changed hands more than once before Lennar took it over two years ago. The 375-foot tower includes 254 residences, 4,710 square feet of ground-floor retail space and nine levels of parking. Renderings show people relaxing poolside and looking out toward San Francisco from balconies high above Broadway.

If the tower looks like something out of San Francisco’s SoMA neighborhood, that’s because the architect, Solomon Cordwell Buenz, also designed the towers at One Rincon Hill in that city, although those are several hundred feet taller.

And just like in San Francisco’s South of Market growth spurt, Oakland’s new development is spreading east of Broadway. At 1700 Webster St., two blocks from Lennar’s project, a 206-unit building is also under construction.

Webster will be bustling with activity — there are plans for other buildings at 1717, 1510 and 1433 Webster for a total of 821 units within three city blocks. Restaurants, bars and a new store, Howden Market, are a quick stroll away.

Guy Karmi, co-owner of Howden Market and Spice Monkey restaurant, welcomes his new neighbors.

“It’s been nine years — we’ve seen the neighborhood slowly but surely change. We’re just excited,” Karmi said.

As crews tear up the parking lot at 17th and Broadway, members of the Ragged Wing Ensemble and the Flight Deck theater group on Wednesday were building sets for a play inspired by their new neighbor. The three-part play, “Overnight,” explores what happens to a neighborhood when a new high-rise comes to town.

Flight Deck Executive Director Anna Shneiderman, said many members of the theater group, which includes partnerships with the Lower Bottom Playaz, Theatre Aluminous and Gritty City Rep, can’t afford to live in Oakland anymore.

“Downtown Oakland is in a big period of transition, there’s a lot of new people coming in, there’s a lot of new money coming in, and other people are being displaced,” she said. “It’s a complex problem … but the question is who is actually going to be here in downtown in 10 or 20 years to enjoy the transformation that has occurred?”