San Bruno's Tanforan mall could become 1,500 homes next to BART

Most of the Tanforan mall is already gone in every way but the physical one. Sears closed in 2020. JCPenney closed in May 2025. Barnes and Noble left in May 2026. What still draws a crowd to the 44 acres at El Camino Real and Sneath Lane in San Bruno is a Target, a movie theater and the BART station next door.

On October 5 the city filed the document that decides what comes next. The Final EIR for the Tanforan Redevelopment Project, the environmental review San Bruno has to certify before it can approve anything, landed with the state's CEQAnet clearinghouse that day. It describes 1,014 to 1,514 apartments, up to 200 of them affordable, plus 1.2 million to 1.7 million square feet of lab and office space. The owner is Alexandria Real Estate Equities, applying with Strada Investment Group.

This is the largest housing site in San Bruno by a wide margin. The city's state housing target for 2023 to 2031 is 3,165 homes. Tanforan alone would cover 32 to 48 percent of it, by our math. And it sits in a city where, by Houseberry's San Bruno data, the typical home sold for about $1.38 million in September 2026.

What would replace the mall

The Final EIR studies two versions. The one Alexandria filed in 2022 leaned on office and lab space, with 1,014 apartments. A version revised in March 2025 shifts toward housing: up to 1,514 homes, about 200 of them in a standalone affordable building, and a hotel option.

Figures are ranges from the Final EIR filing and SF YIMBY's July 2025 summary of the Draft EIR. Parking tops out at 6,221 spaces, which the document notes is below the city's own minimums.

Heights are the part neighbors will feel. The Final EIR puts buildings at 1 to 7 stories, roughly 20 to 80 feet. The 2022 design had office buildings up to 127 feet, so this is a lower plan than the one first shown.

The neighbors, by the numbers

Houseberry scores 13 San Bruno neighborhoods, and the mall is its own one. Tanforan ranks 11th of 13, with a 2.7 overall score and a 1.9 safety score. Most of that is the mall itself: there are few homes inside its outline.

The homes are across the edges. Huntington Park, on the BART side, scores 3.4 overall and its typical home sold for about $1.6 million in September 2026. Belle Air Park, south of Interstate 380, also scores 3.4, at about $949,900, down from about $1.04 million a year earlier.

One more number from our own work. When we laid FEMA's flood map over every Bay Area neighborhood this week, Belle Air Park came out with 59 percent of its land in the 1% annual chance flood zone, one of the higher shares on the Peninsula. Our neighborhood flood map has the details. The Tanforan site's own drainage gets its due in the EIR, and the county's flood agency, OneShoreline, commented on it.

The fights that are left

Three issues will decide how this goes.

The airport. Some of the homes would sit inside SFO's 70-decibel noise contour, which takes a City Council override of the county airport commission. "The Airport remains concerned with the development of high-density residential uses on the Proposed Project site," SFO wrote in its comment letter.

The schools. Allen Elementary's PTA president Melissa Burroughs told the San Mateo Daily Journal the city's deal principles "do not mention any direct benefits" for schools. The council approved those principles 3 to 1, with Councilmember Tom Hamilton voting no and Mayor Rico Medina recused.

The height vote. On November 3, San Bruno voters decide whether to repeal Ordinance 1284, the 1977 rule that requires a citywide vote for buildings over three stories or 50 feet. The Final EIR does not discuss how that rule applies to Tanforan, and we have not seen the city say. It is the question we would ask at the October 20 hearing.

We think San Bruno should certify this review and approve the larger housing version. A dead mall next to a BART station is the easiest place in San Mateo County to add 1,500 homes.

The honest cost is the air. The EIR says people living on the site would face elevated health risk from Highway 380, El Camino and airport traffic even with MERV 13 filters. That is a reason to design for it, with sealed buildings and filtration in every unit, not a reason to keep the parking lot.

The site has carried a lot of history already: a racetrack from 1899, where Seabiscuit was stabled, and in 1942 an assembly center where about 8,000 Japanese Americans were held before being sent to camps. The memorial by the BART station, dedicated in 2022, stays.

Before October 20, see how the 13 neighborhoods around the site compare on Houseberry's San Bruno ranking.

Sources

• CEQAnet: Tanforan Redevelopment Project, Final EIR, received October 5, 2026
• Tanforan for San Bruno: application summary
• SF YIMBY: Draft EIR for Tanforan, July 2025
• San Mateo Daily Journal: school funding in the Tanforan agreement
• San Mateo County: Tanforan memorial dedication, August 2022
• KRON4: Tanforan prepares for its transformation