Hillsdale Reimagined Just Cleared Its Biggest Hurdle. Bay Meadows Shows What Happens Next.

At a San Mateo City Council meeting this past December, Mayor Rob Newsom made an admission that had nothing to do with the shopping center everyone had come to talk about. He was talking about Bay Meadows, the 83-acre redevelopment a few blocks away that won approval roughly two decades ago. "The things that pains me literally every week is driving through and seeing two city blocks that are vacant," he told the room.

He said it at the exact meeting where the city was hearing, for the first time in public, the details of a far bigger project: the Hillsdale Reimagined redevelopment of the mall on El Camino Real. If you own a home near the Beresford neighborhood on the mall's western edge, or you're weighing whether to buy one this year, the render of the future retail village isn't the useful data point. The useful data point is what actually happened, and hasn't happened, a mile away at Bay Meadows. That's the base rate for how fast "approved" turns into "built" in this particular part of San Mateo.

What Actually Got Filed This Year

The project has moved. HSC Property Owner LLC submitted a formal Planned Development application to the city on June 23, 2025, on behalf of the mall's longtime owner, Bohannon Development Company, which brought in Northwood Investors as a partner in 2021. The city sent back incompleteness comments on October 17, 2025. The applicant resubmitted on February 13, 2026. On June 1, 2026, the city deemed the application complete, which is the procedural trigger that starts the formal review clock.

Here's how the paper trail reads:

The scope has also grown since the first renderings circulated. Early plans floated around 1,392 housing units. The February 2026 filing puts the number at up to 1,670 residential units, including roughly 250 affordable units, with 15 percent of the apartments and 15 percent of the for-sale townhomes reserved as below market rate housing. The project calls for demolishing about 1.49 million square feet of the existing mall, which is 32.66 of the site's 44.69 acres, while the 12-acre North Block that already holds Apple and Cinépolis stays in place. In its place: up to 2.06 million square feet of new commercial space and roughly 4.5 acres of open space, according to the city of San Mateo's project page.

The Height Line That Actually Matters If You Border the Site

The headline number that matters most to a buyer isn't the unit count. It's the height step-down.

The plan calls for buildings 8 to 10 stories tall along El Camino Real, closest to the Caltrain station, then stepping down as the project moves west toward the existing Beresford neighborhood, dropping to townhouse height at that edge, according to the developer's own FAQ page. If you own or are considering a home along that western boundary, this is the detail worth tracking as design review proceeds, because it determines whether your block eventually backs up to a mid-rise tower or to something closer to your own roofline. The design has not been finalized. Building-specific approvals (what the city calls SPAR review) come after the Master Development Plan is approved, so the exact massing on any given parcel is still open to change.

The plan also proposes roughly 2,000 additional on-site parking spaces, mostly in below and above-grade garages, to replace the surface lots being lost to housing and open space.

The Incentive Bay Meadows Never Had

Here's where the two projects actually diverge, and it's worth understanding before you draw conclusions from either one.

Andrew Turco, a vice president at Sares Regis Group Northern California, one of the developers on the Hillsdale project, told the December council meeting that the team has its own reason to move fast on housing specifically. "There is a natural market forcing mechanism," he said, arguing that leaving half the site as vacant commercial land while housing sits unbuilt simply doesn't work financially for the ownership group. Read plainly, that's a claim that residential delivery could outpace the full commercial buildout, not that the whole project moves at one speed.

Bay Meadows didn't have that same forcing mechanism built into its structure the same way, and the record shows it. That 83-acre project was approved roughly 20 years ago with an agreement originally meant to govern an 18-year buildout, expiring at the end of 2023. It has seen repeated delays, and a portion of the site remains undeveloped today, which is exactly what put the mayor at a council podium describing blocks he still drives past.

Separately, officials involved in the Hillsdale project have told reporters to expect roughly four years of permitting work after formal approvals before any construction begins, with a stated goal of full buildout landing around 2040, per NBC Bay Area's coverage of the project. Layer that on top of the Bay Meadows precedent and the honest read is: approvals happening now are a meaningful step, not a signal that the neighborhood around Hillsdale changes on any near-term calendar.

What This Means If You're Near Hillsdale Right Now

If you're looking at a home near the mall this year, the practical read is closer to "this changes the area over a decade or more, in phases" than "this changes the area soon." A few things follow from that.

If you're buying near the site edge, ask your agent for the current parcel-level plans, not the renderings from the press coverage, since the design that eventually gets built could look different from what circulated when the story first broke. Also ask which parcel is slated to break ground first. Given the developer's own stated incentive to front-load housing, the first phase built could be residential, which affects which blocks see construction noise and access changes first and which sit untouched for years.

If you're selling near the site and hoping a redevelopment story lifts your number, be careful about pricing in a future that Bay Meadows shows can lag by a decade or more. Appraisers work from closed comparable sales, not from master plans still working through Planning Commission review. A listing near Hillsdale competes on its own merits today.

For day-to-day life in the meantime, the existing shopping center keeps operating through the early phases regardless of the timeline above it. The developer has said a grocery-anchor space remains part of the plan, and while no lease has been publicly guaranteed for a specific tenant, the current stores, including Trader Joe's, are expected to stay open well after any first construction begins given how the project is phased.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will construction start this year? No. City Council hearings alone are anticipated for late 2026, and developers have told reporters to expect roughly four years of permitting after approvals before groundbreaking.

Will the mall close all at once? No. The project is designed in phases, and city and developer documents both describe the existing shopping center remaining open and operational while approvals and early construction proceed.

Does this mean I should wait to buy near Hillsdale? Not necessarily. Bay Meadows suggests these timelines run long, so a home near the site should be evaluated on what it offers today: layout, condition, commute, and comparable sales, rather than a future construction date that has already moved once and could move again.

If you're weighing a purchase near a neighborhood in transition, whether that's Hillsdale's edges or another pocket of the Peninsula with its own moving pieces, I'd rather walk you through what's verified and what's still speculative before you write an offer. Andrew Klink works these blocks with Sandy every day, and we'd welcome the chance to help you read a market like this one clearly. Schedule a complimentary Peninsula market consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.