Preliminary Project Application

Application
Summary

A thoughtful approach

On October 5, 2022 Alexandria submitted a preliminary project application to the City of San Bruno for the 44-acre Tanforan site.

Following this initial application, the City embarked on a comprehensive staff review for conformance of the project to the City’s General Plan and Zoning Code development regulations. In March 2023, the project analysis required by the State California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) was initiated, in addition to other technical studies and economic assessments.

Community priorities

Given the significance of this project and the importance of this opportunity to San Bruno’s future, the City expanded its review to include a series of community input sessions and virtual engagement tools at the beginning of the process and throughout the review period.

The City presented an introduction of the community engagement approach and preliminary project application to the City Council on October 25, 2022. This engagement started with the first community open houses at the Public Engagement Center in November 2022, followed by a robust outreach program through February 2023 to solicit initial public priorities for San Bruno and the future of Tanforan. A Community Priorities Progress Report based on this feedback was presented to Council on March 28, 2023. Please click here to view the report in its entirety. The review process ahead will include multiple public meetings with the City’s Planning Commission and City Council, as well as other review bodies, before the project is considered for final action.

Preliminary Project Application

Alexandria Real Estate Equities (Alexandria), and its development partner, Strada Investment Group (Strada) in conjunction with a future Bay Area non-profit affordable housing developer, were excited to present a Preliminary Project Application for the redevelopment of the 44-acre Tanforan site in San Bruno on October 5, 2022. Click here to view the original application file.

In November 2023, Alexandria submitted a Revised Preliminary Project Application. The application proposes to replace the existing mall with a transit- oriented mixed-use village. The project seeks to retain and upgrade Target and keep and modernize the Century at Tanforan movie theater to accommodate the modern movie-going experience. The future uses for the site are proposed to include a 2 million square foot innovative life science campus, 1,014 housing units, private and publicly-accessible, privately-owned open space, as well as 86,250 square feet of new modernized retail space. The proposed land use program has not changed substantially from the version submitted in October 2022.

The revised site plan includes minor modifications to the layout of the private street network on the site to improve the site access and circulation to and across the project site. The revisions also allow for the creation of a “town square” in the center of the site with more expansive publicly-accessible open spaces and better interfaces between these open spaces and the new retail. Additionally, the revised application includes a Flex-Use Strategy with two “flex zones” which remain designated primarily for commercial/life science uses in the base case and would alternatively allow a broader range of potential uses including up to 500 additional housing units and a 170-room hotel. The purpose of these flex zones is to allow flexibility in a multi-year project to respond to changing market conditions while remaining committed to the core imperatives of creating a mixed-use transit village. The exact amount and configuration of future development in the flex zones would depend on a number of market factors, and cannot be forecast with precision. These two land use scenarios will be analyzed in the project Environmental Impact Report (EIR), as described in more detail in the project Notice of Preparation.