|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The Pleasanton Weekly, Livermore Vine and DanvilleSanRamon.com are embarking on a cover story series in 2025 examining the downtowns throughout the Tri-Valley. Our project continues this week with reporter Jeanita Lyman’s feature on the promise of a true downtown finally coming to San Ramon.
A plan is born
While the downtown districts of most neighboring Tri-Valley communities – Danville, Livermore and Pleasanton – can trace their origins back more than a century, the story of downtown San Ramon lies less in its past and more in its present and near future.
The vision for a centralized, mixed-use neighborhood in the city’s central core stems from the CityWalk Master Plan, which was adopted by the San Ramon City Council in 2020. The strategy calls for the redevelopment of 135 acres of what had been primarily office space into 4,500 units of multi-family housing alongside recreational amenities, a new hotel, and 170,000 square feet of additional retail space over the course of 20 to 30 years.
That plan coincided with two major developments – the COVID-19 pandemic that saw offices in Bishop Ranch vacant as office local workers shifted to remote work like many worldwide, and the passage of the state Housing Crisis Act of 2019 (Senate Bill 330) that went into effect at the start of 2020 with the goal of reducing roadblocks to new housing projects.
However, redevelopment of Bishop Ranch has been in the works since long before that.
“Ever since Masud Mehran and Alex Mehran, Sr. acquired Bishop Ranch in 1978, the vision was to create a vibrant, mixed-use environment,” said Alex Mehran Jr., CEO and president of Sunset Development. “In the 1980s, demand was primarily for office space, so that became the initial focus. As the market evolved and community needs shifted, we’ve been able to adapt and steadily bring that original vision to life, culminating in the dynamic downtown neighborhood we’re building today.”
The Mehrans’ goal of a mixed-use development – specifically with housing – meanwhile played into city leaders’ vision for the growing city, and a means of keeping new housing primarily concentrated in a single neighborhood while mitigating the impacts of the city’s growth in other more established residential neighborhoods.
“This innovative development positions San Ramon as a model for how modern cities can evolve to meet the needs of residents, workers, and visitors alike,” San Ramon Mayor Mark Armstrong told DanvilleSanRamon.com.
“Having a walkable downtown with a variety of housing options helps to protect our hillsides, maintains the character of existing neighborhoods, lowers the number of vehicles on the road, and improves our overall quality of life,” the first-term mayor added.
Bishop Ranch had already started to change before the pandemic and the implementation of new state affordable housing laws, with workers at the office park seeing their employers and others downsizing their office space as work became increasingly centered in the digital world.
“In the olden days they had rooms of filing cabinets with paper, and they don’t have that anymore, so employees don’t need as much space, period,” said San Ramon Planning Commissioner Gary Alpert, who had watched his offices with AT&T shrink from four wings to two wings during his time working there.
Those changes were also apparent to Mehran Jr. once he joined the company, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather but in a different era.
“From my perspective when I joined Sunset Development in the late 2000s, it was clear the market was beginning to shift — people and businesses were increasingly drawn to walkable environments with urban-style amenities.” Mehran Jr. told DanvilleSanRamon in a recent email interview. “That’s when we began reshaping the vision for City Center, which had started in the 1990s, into the version that opened in 2018.”
Securing entitlements for CityWalk upon its passage in 2020 proceeded to serve as “a major step forward in realizing a true downtown for San Ramon”, Mehran Jr. said.
The major hurdle for redevelopment, according to Mehran Jr., is one that might be obvious: How does a city create a downtown from scratch?
“A unique challenge facing the project was the lack of a historic reference point,” Mehran Jr. said. “Other Tri-Valley downtowns are built out of a historic main street, which we did not have. That was the driving factor in choosing unique architecture that down the road will create a unique historical character for San Ramon.”
The upside to this, however, was a “blank slate” that allowed for easier access to City Center Bishop Ranch compared with other downtown neighborhoods in the form of “proximate and adequate parking” within the structure, Mehran Jr. said.
“Over time, our hope is that we build a fabric with varying architecture and vintages of buildings that leads to a similar character as other downtowns many decades down the line,” Mehran Jr. said.
Fleshing out the plan
The tour of the now-burgeoning CityWalk plan – now beginning to take shape in the years since its inception – that City Manager Steven Spedowfski leads developers and other interested parties on starts at City Hall, where the plan was first approved, and where developments related to the plan continue to make their way through Planning Commission and City Council meetings.
One of the first attractions on the route is the Iron Horse Regional Trail Overcrossing across Bollinger Canyon Road – referred to as “future bridge” in the original CityWalk plan – which continued to be fenced off last month ahead of its grand opening set next weekend.
“This will greatly improve pedestrian and bike travel along the Iron Horse Trail. It is expected to eliminate three hours of red lights a day on Bollinger Canyon Road,” Armstrong said.
In addition to the bridge’s opening, Armstrong and Spedowfski pointed to funding that had recently been secured by Contra Costa County District 2 Supervisor Candace Andersen for a dual-tracking project along the Iron Horse trail between Bollinger Canyon and Crow Canyon roads.
“This exciting project would be the first of its kind in the county to safely separate wheeled resources and pedestrians along the trail and a model for similar projects in the future,” Armstrong said.
With the county having completed a study on the prospect of an autonomous vehicle program along the Iron Horse Trail, Spedowfski noted that the bridge had been designed with that program in mind should it be implemented.
“The bridge was designed with enough width – 16 feet – to potentially have an autonomous vehicle lane on one side,” Spedowfski said.
If implemented, the autonomous shuttles being considered for the trail would be two-passenger vehicles, smaller than the autonomous shuttles currently in effect between the Bishop Ranch transit center and destinations within the neighborhood including City Center.
Still in the works on the east side of the Iron Horse at the base of the bridge is a roundabout and entrance to Central Park that are part of the city’s Parks Master Plan. Meanwhile, activity is slated to kick off soon on multiple projects planned for the currently vacant Bishop Ranch 3A site on the northeast corner of Camino Ramon and Bollinger Canyon Road.
Those projects include a hotel, as well as the seven-story, 457-unit Avalon apartments project that was approved by the City Council last summer.
“We hear that they will probably start grading and actual construction, which is rare now in the East Bay, if not the Bay Area,” Spedowfski said. “A lot of apartment complexes have stalled because they can’t get the funding. Everyone thinks that developers have this huge pot of money, that they self-fund everything. But they go to banks like anybody else to get loans.”
Further north along Camino Ramon is the site of the 200-unit affordable housing project from Eden Housing, which was the subject of the July 1 Planning Commission meeting.
Walking across Camino Ramon past City Center on Bishop Drive, a city green and an additional 170,000 square feet of retail space along a “retail promenade” and additional housing are slated to the north, rounding out the current 404-unit City Village project a block up across Executive Parkway, of which 155 homes have already been sold so far.
Further down Bishop Drive, The Shops at Bishop Ranch offer a more practical alternative to the luxury goods of City Center for some shoppers, including a Whole Foods, Home Goods and Target, as well as Peet’s Coffee and Crumbl. According to Spedowfski, that shopping center is not set to undergo any changes under the CityWalk plan or others.
“I think if we were to propose modifying anything to do with Target, there would be pitchforks and torches,” Spedowfski quipped.
To the north, Bishop Ranch 2600 is also slated to remain in its current form. A walkway leading up to the office space offers views of Annabel Lake and the walkers, joggers and office workers making use of the outdoor area on a sunny Friday afternoon for recreation, phone calls and chats with co-workers.
“My wife grew up here, and my in-laws were on the original incorporation,” Spedowfski said. “It was interesting – up until a few years ago, they didn’t know that there was a lake here.”
The manmade lake surrounded by a 2.5-mile walking path could become more prominent as the transformation of Bishop Ranch wears on, with its shores being considered as one potential site for an outdoor amphitheater that Sunset has received parks credit for, according to Spedowfski.
Meanwhile, the neighboring Marriott Hotel and Conference Center near the lake’s eastern shores has also seen an uptick in activity – with city leaders being forced to relocate the annual State of the City event to the San Ramon Community Center when the Marriott was found to be fully booked that day.
“More and more groups are starting to book out the Marriott,” Spedowfski said. “We’re seeing weddings and conferences.”
Past the Marriott and near the northwestern shores of Annabel Lake, Bishop Ranch NW is slated for entirely residential development, parking and parks, along with the Bishop Ranch NE site on which City Village currently sits.
Walking back to City Hall from City Center, the 177-unit luxury assisted living and memory care facility Belmont Village is now open to senior residents on the south side of Bollinger Canyon Road, marking the first project completed at the Bishop Ranch 1A site, which is set to host additional housing and a greenway under the CityWalk plan.
Adding to the plan
Since the adoption of the CityWalk plan, Sunset has found itself with even more land now set for redevelopment, with Chevron selling its former sprawling office space across Bollinger Canyon Road from City Center back to the company in 2022.
Redevelopment plans from Sunset have been in the works ever since, with formal development deemed complete earlier this year, environmental analysis underway, and the proposed Orchards project now making its way through the city’s Architectural Review Board.
“Bishop Ranch will ultimately consist of several distinct neighborhoods, and Orchards plays a key role in rounding out the vision for our downtown core,” Mehran Jr. said. “Its retail offerings will serve as an extension of City Center, enhancing the walkable, urban energy we’re creating.”
The Orchards is envisioned as comprising a multi-family district to the northeast, a mixed-use district to the southeast, and a neighborhood district on a majority of the site for a total of 2,510 new residential units and a minimum 125,000 square feet of retail space in addition to parks and recreational amenities.
“The retail at Orchards will complement City Center,” Mehran Jr. said. “The region has an abundance of neighborhood strip center retail that provides a very convenient format where you are able to park close to the vendor that you are seeking and get back to your car and on your way quickly. The Shops at Bishop Ranch where Whole Foods and Target are is our version of this.”
Mehran Jr. said that while The Shops at Bishop Ranch serve their purpose, new retail to the north of City Center and within the Orchards project will primarily be an “extension” of the experience at City Center.
“That said, we do want to have several neighborhood service outlets at Orchards where guests can pick up groceries or other goods while enjoying some of the more experiential elements at the center,” Mehran Jr. said. “The two are not exclusive, but the center will have a main street-like character rather than being set up like a strip center where speed and convenience are the drivers over a sense of place.”
A plan takes shape
With new retail still on the on the way, City Center and The Shops at Bishop Ranch serve as the primary attractions in the city’s central core, surrounded by existing office space as well as vacant sites such as the former Chevron Park at 6001 Bollinger Canyon Drive and Bishop Ranch 3A and those under construction or in the beginning move-in phases in Bishop Ranch NE.
On a hot summer afternoon, both shopping centers are full of groups of teens and pre-teens enjoying the early weeks of their summer break, shoppers and diners of all ages, office workers on break, and students and remote workers in the numerous cafes and coffee shops throughout the two blocks.
Since its inception in 2018, City Center has continued to attract new tenants and new visitors, with weekly farmers markets on Saturdays marking the biggest turnout for the neighborhood in its current stage. New attractions are also on the horizon in the immediate future, with a Smooth Jazz Series kicking off this week.
“Entertainment continues to evolve at Bishop Ranch,” Mehran Jr. said. “City Center already offers a range of experiences, from Escapology’s escape rooms and SandboxVR’s immersive games to TheyMade’s fashion studio and THE LOT Cinema’s movie theater.”
Mehran Jr. also pointed to community events including the jazz series and the seasonal Kristi Yamaguchi Ice Rink, as well as the future amphitheater and new trails and parks in the works under both the CityWalk plan and the Orchards.
With the city in the early years of the ambitious plan to transform Bishop Ranch, the neighborhood does not yet feel like a fully-fledged downtown – but it is changing fast.
“I believe we’re probably 10 years into a 30-year transformation,” Spedowfski said, contrasting that with the 40-year timeline for Dublin’s downtown plan.
While plans to transform the neighborhood have been in the works behind the scenes for years, recent construction of landmark projects such as the Iron Horse Trail Overcrossing and Belmont Village have made it clear that change is afoot.
“Most people don’t really pay attention until you start seeing construction and what it takes to actually transform the area,” Spedowfski said.
One reason for a streamlined process is a strong relationship between the city government and Sunset Development, which has been operating in San Ramon for decades since the company first began as a housing developer in Livermore.
“One of the advantages that we have here is that we’re dealing with one entity that’s the property owner, the developer, and in most cases, the operator,” Spedowfski said.
“Usually you’re dealing with multiple property owners, and once they get approvals, they sell it off from the developer, then once the developer finishes the product and there’s an eventual owner, it’s not single-family residential – it’s an apartment or something else, and somebody else takes over,” he added.
Mehran Jr. pointed to a “strong, collaborative relationship with city leaders” and a shared desire to work towards creating “a vibrant, walkable downtown that reflects the needs of the community” while supporting long-term growth.
Alpert also noted the apparently symbiotic relationship between Sunset’s desires and the city’s needs that have converged in recent years.
“We had this huge need for housing as assigned by the state, and Sunset at the same time found that they had more office space than they needed, and they wanted to diversify their business by adding housing to the portfolio,” Alpert said. “So it was a perfect match. We had a need to build housing, and they had a desire to plan and build housing.”
Like most California communities seeking to contend with the state’s housing crisis and comply with new affordable housing laws, San Ramon’s City Council and Planning Commission meetings have seen critiques over the years of growth in the city at large, often from longtime residents.
Part of the purpose of concentrating housing in the city’s central core is to mitigate impacts of new housing on other neighborhoods, city officials argue.
“San Ramon has long had a vision to preserve our existing neighborhoods,” Armstrong said. “For a very long time we have chosen to prioritize most of the state-mandated housing growth in the city core while preserving existing retail, commercial and open space, and especially our existing neighborhoods. As part of this vision San Ramon is in the process of creating a unique and vibrant modern downtown.”
Other critics of the process have rallied against a separate project near the city’s central core at the Market Place shopping center, which is the site of a redevelopment project that organizers of Citizens Against Market Place Apartment Development claim takes advantage of mixed-use permitting in the city and is allowing for a valued, existing retail space in the city to be demolished in favor of a project that will be primarily housing with minimal shopping and dining options.
Construction on the Market Place project is currently stalled amid litigation from CAMPAD.
Other residents are concerned that redevelopment for Bishop Ranch could also focus more on squeezing in apartments and condos to a concentrated neighborhood than to providing a rounded out, truly mixed-use neighborhood that evolves into a downtown destination.
“I want to see more houses where our younger families can stay,” said Chirag Kathrani, who ran for mayor against Armstrong in last year’s election. “Reduce the price of the homes.”
Kathrani said that while additional affordable housing, beyond what has already been planned for, would risk reducing property values for homeowners in the city, the greater risk was with failing to attract enough young families to contend with declining enrollment elsewhere in the San Ramon Valley Unified School District – which would result in less funding from the state and have the potential to impact its standing as a “destination district” for families.
“As soon as the school quality goes down the prices will go down eventually,” Kathrani said. “So planning smaller houses will actually retain their property value.”
Alpert, who also serves on the board of the San Ramon Valley Education Foundation, said that while the district is contending with enrollment decline, increased housing in San Ramon’s central core is forecast to mitigate some of that decline as additional families move in.
“The hope is with the core and the buildout here in San Ramon, whether it’s 8,000 or 10,000, is that it might slow down declining enrollment,” Alpert said. “It won’t be enough to make up for that decline elsewhere, but it’s something.”
Alpert also expressed support for more affordable housing options in the city.
“I’m a huge proponent personally of affordable housing and adding housing to the city,” Alpert said. “My daughter’s a schoolteacher, so I think about people like her and her husband.”
Kathrani and another neighboring resident, Yohannes Tilahun, said that they both wanted to see more public outreach and opportunities for feedback on the redevelopment of Bishop Ranch at its current stage, with both only recently becoming interested in the functions of local government years after the discussion and planning stages for CityWalk.
“I moved back to the U.S. and I really wanted to get involved in the city,” Tilahun said. “I was very happy on what I could be able to contribute because I’m an investment banker.”
“To me, the biggest issue is that we have no clarity from the council,” he continued. “What do they want? What are they trying to do? I don’t expect to see Santana Row, but some version of it with a mixture where families can come, and that’s the vision I had in some form or shape. We’re going to incorporate the houses, and then you have fun new places. You don’t have to go to Dublin or to Pleasanton for families to go out. But for some reason, that’s not the picture I have here.”
The plan ahead
While San Jose’s Santana Row has been frequently mentioned as an example in discussions about transforming Bishop Ranch, specifically in early conversations introducing the concept of the Orchards neighborhood, it’s been years since those early talks took place.
And while it’s too late for the public to weigh in on the overall CityWalk plan, future conversations set for the future as the formal application process proceeds on the Orchards.
Following a series of public meetings on the project with the Architectural Review Board that concluded last month, the project is now set for additional public hearings at the Planning Commission and City Council levels following the completion of the environmental review process.
Kathrani and Tilahun said they still wanted to see additional public outreach beyond the required public hearings and commission and council meetings, such as a town hall event, in which residents can ask questions from city officials and developers and provide their feedback.
In the more immediate future, two major events in the neighborhood are slated for later in the month: the Smooth Jazz series kicking off this Saturday (July 12), and the grand opening of the Iron Horse Trail Overcrossing next Saturday (July 19), both of which are expected to draw crowds to usher in the most recent new offerings in San Ramon’s growing downtown neighborhood.
Searching for Eryn: Remembering Tri-Valley educator who drowned in American RiverMarch 6, 2026 6:27 am