Bay Meadows

Bay Meadows’ first homebuilder, TRI Pointe Homes, was announced last week. Good news travels fast—the announcement is making headlines in the Bay Area’s top blogs and newspapers. In “Where Sea Biscuit Raced, A City Shall Rise”, Curbed SF’s Philip Ferrato explores our rich history and shows what’s to come at Bay Meadows. Check it out!

Where Sea Biscuit Raced, A City Shall Rise
Thursday, April 12, 2012
by Philip Ferrato

Bay Meadows is finally happening. Construction begins this summer at the Wilson Meany Sullivan project to build a new, self-contained and transit-friendly town on the site of the old race track with a 63-unit residential component called Amelia to break ground in a few months. Backed by Stockbridge Capital, the plans call for over 1100 residential units and 1.5M square feet of Class A office space built along the Caltrains corridor as a buffer. Talks about redeveloping the Depression-era race track’s site began at the turn of the last century, but in the ’30s the track had been home to racing innovations we now take for granted. It sputtered for a while in an on-again, off-again existence before closing for good four years ago.

To quote the Wikipedia entry, the owners: introduced pari-mutuel wagering, the popular Daily Double, the first all-enclosed starting gate, the totalizator board and the photo-finish camera at Bay Meadows.

There was a bit of resistance from nostalgic bettors at the last minute. Along with its self-contained nature, key to the project the Caltrains Hillsdale stop, currently about 50 minutes from the Caltrains station at Fourth Street and its location a few minutes from Route 101.

In addition to the usual sustainability and LEED-certified suspects, plans also include 15 acres of parks, a community garden and a public plaza set into the retail/restaurant area. While the master planning and commercial buildings (they’re calling them “stations”) are by HOK, the residential components will be by other architectural firms in a variety of styles, but given the current line-up, don’t expect anything cutting-edge. There’s an interactive map , and check out the gallery above. No word on whether they’ll be naming streets after famous race horses.