OAKLAND — Two Jack London Square parking lots will soon give way to a pair of eight-story buildings with a combined 473 apartments.

“Jack London (Square) has always been in need of greater density. Having two housing projects there will make a big difference,” Planning Commissioner Clark Manus said.

The planning commission unanimously approved developer CIM’s plans for the parcels at its mid-April meeting. CIM now lacks only building permits to break ground. Both buildings are proposed at 85 feet tall, well under the maximum allowed, and include a mix of housing and 2,500 square feet of retail space.

The two mixed-use buildings are the only residential properties in the nine-parcel Jack London Square Development Project in the works since 2004. Building sites now complete include offices, retail and a parking lot.

The last site awaiting construction after the two apartment buildings is expected to see a hotel. Plans for the overall project were approved before rules were passed requiring affordable housing in any new Oakland development.

But the market-rate housing will “help alleviate the regional and local housing crisis by increasing supply at a desirable location,” a staff report states.

The smaller of the two buildings, currently known as Parcel D, will be at the gateway to Jack London Square, at the corner of Broadway and Embarcadero.

Planning commissioners could not agree on the most appropriate color for the building, but renderings by architect Solomon Cordwell Buenz show it dark blue.

“It’s a bold building,” Planning Commission chairman Adhi Nagraj said approvingly.

The building is shaped like a blocky capital letter U, with its courtyard facing the adjacent four-story office and retail building to the west at 70 Washington St.

It will include 135 studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments, along with ground-floor commercial space for restaurants and retail tenants.

The other building will be several blocks to the south, between Harrison and Alice streets at Embarcadero and Water on property labeled Parcel F2. It will include a mix of 338 apartments, mostly one-bedrooms, with some two- and three-bedrooms. It also will include street-level retail.

The eight-story building is generally shaped like a capital E, again opening to the west, but will have on the Water Street side three-story townhouses with stoops that will lend more variety to its vertical appearance.

The two sites have 36 and 86 parking spots, respectively, far fewer than typically required of new developments. But planners expect a zoning regulation variance in light of the already built first-come, first-serve 1,086-space parking structure next to the Parcel F site, and the seven-story garage across Washington Street from movie theaters within walking distance of the Parcel D site.

“There is ample parking. … Staff does not support building additional parking at this point,” case planner Catherine Payne said in presenting her analysis of the project to the Planning Commission.

“We believe that the best uses are active uses in that area.”

The project promises to be pedestrian-friendly, “to really activate the Jack London Square area,” in the words of CIM’s Sean Buran, with improvements to Water Street’s promenade outside the Parcel F2 site.

Zoning regulations would have allowed the sites to be built as high-rises, potentially up to 179 feet high, with up to 666 residential dwellings each.

“This proposal is really aligned with the community development vision and invests in common areas and, most importantly, public access and Oakland’s access to its own waterfront by activating the ground level,” said Savlan Hauser, executive director of the Jack London Square Improvement District. She also praised the design, “ground-floor activation” and limited on-site parking.

“Hopefully one day it will be eliminated altogether, which will really maximize the evolution of Oakland’s waterfront back from those 1950s-era waterfront parking lots to a really active pedestrian-first space that it will be soon, hopefully,” she said.

Contact Mark Hedin at 510-293-2452, 408-759-2132 or mhedin@bayareanewsgroup.com.