How key projects are transforming San Leandro's downtown
Fresh off its 150th anniversary last year, San Leandro is at the cusp of a new vision for its downtown — one thats more walkable, vibrant, and what city planners hope will become a destination.
“Over the past decade, San Leandro has had a really strong vision and support for its downtown and has enacted a number of policies and made a number of investments that installed infrastructure to help pave the way for where we are today,” said Katie Bowman, the city’s economic development manager. “We’ve really laid the groundwork and been committed to supporting downtown as a transit-oriented development as the center of our community.”
With key projects having just opened, under way or in the pipeline for downtown, San Leandro is attempting to reshape the area into something akin to a walkable urban village well-connected to a transportation network.
The revitalization effort comes as local market conditions are strengthening although other economic headwinds such as continuing high building costs could temper the momentum that the city is starting to see.
But overall, the prospect of a successful new downtown and the investment growth generated by that look robust.
“The downtown feels like it is on an upswing,” said Stephen Baiter, executive director of the Oakland-based East Bay Economic Development Alliance. San Leandro is creating a scene that’s “convenient and seeking to be a catalyst for future business growth and opportunities.”
Cornerstone projects
The Centro Callan project signals the dawn of that new city core, breaking ground last year as what has been deemed the first true large-scale mixed-use development to rise in downtown.
It replaces a long-abandoned CVS/Longs Drug building and surface parking at the northeast corner of East 14th Street and Callan Avenue. Centro Callan is expected to be delivered in 2024.
“This is a major catalyst project that we hope will encourage more high-density mixed-use and residential projects to bring a 24/7 vitality and sustainability in and around downtown and San Leandro BART Station,” said Tom Liao, the city’s community development director.
The contemporary-designed five-story complex being built by Oakland-based The Martin Group and San Francisco-based Sansome Pacific Properties will feature 196 apartments, including affordable units, atop a market and other shops.
In addition, it will incorporate a number of community amenities such as 20,000 square feet of open space, a clubroom, a dog park and conference rooms.
The development sits a half-mile from the BART station and across the street from a bus rapid transit stop.
It will also “offer residents plentiful bike parking as well as car-share vehicles for tenants without personal vehicles,” said Justin Osler, principal at Martin. “Along with being transit-oriented and pedestrian-friendly, Centro Callan will anchor San Leandro’s downtown core at the busiest intersection in town with 30,000 square feet of street-facing retail, creating a space for people to come together at our new pedestrian plaza.”
Directly opposite Centro Callan is the site of another linchpin project for downtown – the Town Hall Square apartment proposal from Oakland-based Beam Development LLC.
“The city is aware of the benefit of bringing the residential development into that area to support the retail environment,” said Bob Pickett, project leader at Beam. “In any city’s economics, retail is really significant, and this location is ideal for residential development because of its proximity to a major bus stop right on the front curb. Plus the BART station is within easy walking distance from this location.”
Pickett noted the proximity to mass transportation helps the environment.
“Obviously people can get to places without using their cars,” he said, “and that’s a big deal to everybody these days. Even if people
own cars, if they can conduct 80% of their life Monday through Friday by using public transit, that’s a benefit to the whole region.”
Beam seeks to build a 180-unit development on land once host to San Leandro’s first city hall around the turn of the last century. This project would include 18 affordable units, public space outside the building and electric-vehicle charging stations.
Pickett expects the approval process to go smoothly as the city has shown support for the project as an infill development, he said. The project also doesn’t appear to present significant environmental issues.
Town Hall Square could break ground next year and be ready for occupancy in 2025, he said.
“The kind of project we’re developing is conducive to the demand for the area right now,” Pickett said. “I’m excited about the opportunity. It looks like we are kind of on the ground floor of the revitalization of their downtown area.”
Another major infill project is 899 Alvarado, an entitled all-market- rate residential development by San Francisco-based Maximus.The project has been approved and is in the building permit approval stage.
Like Centro Callan and Town Hall Square, 899 Alvarado is a few minutes’ walk from BART. It will provide a total of 687 units in two buildings - one at four stories and the other at five on top of ground-floor podiums. Amenities will include an on-site café, a community parklet and co-working spaces.
These cornerstone projects coincide with a food and beverage scene downtown that is also experiencing a kind of reinvigoration. Berkeley-based Fieldwork Brewing Co. has opened an indoor and outdoor space totaling 7,800 square feet, for instance. Dave’s Hot Chicken has opened as well while Nick the Greek is on the way.
“We have great food already,” Bowman said, “and we have an opportunity for more to really help make downtown a destination.”
Transit focus redoubled
The emergence of downtown’s revitalization projects is a result of a process initiated by the adoption of the city’s Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Strategy in 2007.
That planning document identifies downtown as an optimal location for new mixed-use, near-transit projects that accentuate the area’s “role as the shopping district of the city while introducing higher densities and emphasizing a pedestrian orientation,” it says.
Many other Bay Area cities such as Walnut Creek, Hercules, Millbrae and Redwood City have pursued TOD projects over the years, but that planning strategy has become even more of a focus because of the remote-work trend and other consequences arising from the pandemic.
“Transit-oriented development has taken on greater importance since Covid-19,” said Jonathon Kass, transportation policy manager at the Bay Area urban planning think tank SPUR. “While many people — disproportionately people of color and people with lower incomes — have had to rely on transit throughout this period, others now have much more flexibility to work from home or commute outside peak hours. One of the best ways to make transit an attractive option is to build walkable communities, services and jobs at stations. The residents and employees of these places are the ones that will choose transit in our new post-Covid world.”
TOD is also a way to help cities address new housing goals mandated by the state Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) program.
“RHNA requirements have certainly pushed cities to identify more opportunity sites for housing,” Kass said, “and in some cases, those opportunity sites are near transit and downtowns particularly because there is often a lot of surface parking in these areas.”
Indeed, San Leandro’s vital housing areas include downtown along East 14th Street and the Bay Fair area to the south — all designated transit-oriented zones, Bowman said.
Downtown’s evolution
The city’s latest push to remake its downtown builds upon previous major developments over the past two decades, namely the 235,000-square-foot Creekside Plaza Office Park and 1 million- square-foot Tech Campus, which is the central hub of the Lit San Leandro fiber-optic network.
San Leandro has a “good brand and a long, strong industrial history in the region,” Baiter said.
A significant part of that history has involved the manufacturing sector, he said. Harkening back to those roots to a degree, downtown could see part of its future growth coming from companies manufacturing products that leverage artificial intelligence or other advanced technologies.
San Leandro’s fiber-optic system will also continue to help attract companies to downtown, he said.
Other factors can further buoy downtown and its transformation plans.
The San Leandro submarket has seen office vacancy rates dip below the 10-year average to 6.4%, according to Jon Holmquist, senior managing director of investments at commercial real estate services firm Marcus & Millichap.
“Businesses are finding San Leandro an affordable alternative to Oakland or Fremont,” he said.
As vacancy rates have improved, rents have risen over the past year. Office rents have increased a little over 3% to about $35 a square foot, according to Holmquist. Apartment rents went up at a similar clip with two-bedroom apartments leasing at about $2,300 a month on average.
The favorable economic picture is being “driven by companies housing themselves close to BART and conveniences of retail,” he said.
But a possible challenge is that rising interest rates by the federal government and increasing construction and labor costs could put projects still in the proposal stages on hold, Holmquist said.
Although the full potential of a remade downtown could take a while to be realized, he said, San Leandro is “going to continue to trend in a positive direction.”
“San Leandro is the next frontier. It’s coming into its own. It has the benefits of being close to both San Francisco and the Peninsula and, at the same time, has room for expansion because it’s not overbuilt like San Francisco and the Peninsula.”