The plans for a proposed 18-story Marriott hotel (with 276 rooms over 1,600 square feet of ground floor retail space and a parking garage for 95 cars) to rise up to 189-feet in height at 1431 Jefferson Street, stretching from 14th to 15th Streets in Downtown Oakland, have been granted urban infill and community plan exemptions from having to complete a more detailed and resource intensive environmental report.

And if approved by the city’s Planning Commission, the new Marriott, which should take roughly two years to complete, is expected to start construction in October, the first act of which would be demolishing the existing single-story building and parking lot (upon which a 54-unit residential building had been approved to rise back in 2008) on the 1431 Jefferson Street site: