With bugles blaring and cigar smoke lingering, thoroughbred racing came to an end at Bay Meadows in May 2008, as favorites such as BackBackBackGone and Little Dude thundered across the finish line for the last time.
It was sad, but a long time coming. Attendance at the San Mateo racetrack had been dwindling for years, and the property owners envisioned a better use: a pioneering redevelopment that would bring 5 million square feet of housing and office space along with 18 acres of open space to an 83-acre site that sits right on top of a Caltrain station.
“It was our own California version of New Urbanism,” said Chris Meany, whose company Wilson Meany is developing the property with Stockbridge Capital Group.
Now, 18 years later, there may be no bugles or cigars, but the ambitious Bay Meadows redevelopment is galloping toward a homestretch of its own.
On Wednesday, Stockbridge and Wilson Meany announced they have signed a deal for the last two commercial parcels at the site. The tenant is the online gaming company Roblox, which also leases the three other office buildings on the campus. Construction on the last two buildings, totaling 330,000 square feet, is expected to start in June, along with Bay Meadows’ last 67-unit residential complex, bringing the total to 1,100 homes.
The completion of the three buildings will cap a more-than 20-year development plan that has become a model for Bay Area “mega” redevelopments from Treasure Island to Pier 70 to Potrero Power Station.
Today, Bay Meadows’ 1,100 housing units are 95% occupied. When built out, its 1 million square feet of office space will be entirely spoken for. The 40,000 square feet of retail is also 100% leased, with a breakfast spot, coffee shops, pottery studio, juice bar, beer garden, and Mediterranean restaurant. There is a network of plazas and pocket parks, playgrounds, and a community garden, as well as a 12-acre open space with a pond that is popular with walking groups.
“Bay Meadows has fulfilled the vision we had some 20-plus years ago,’’ Meany said. Barry Braden, CEO of Fieldwork Brewing, which opened a beer garden at Bay Meadows in 2017, said the developer’s “vision for that space as an amenity to both the businesses and residents there was pretty forward thinking.” Caltrain commuters stop in for a pint on the way to or from the station, and the beer garden has become a popular meeting place for Giants fans headed to Oracle Park by train.
“On the weekend, it’s strollers and kids and dogs and families and friends gathering,” Braden said. “During the week, the corporate tenants there are really good supporters. It has continued to build upon itself. We are doing better than ever.”
In the age when pressure from YIMBY groups has led to a flurry of laws making it easier to win approval for dense housing, the idea of a mixed-use urban development next to a train station seems obvious. But at the time, the big real estate developments on the Peninsula were closed-off corporate campuses, like Oracle’s 1.5 million-square-foot Redwood Shores headquarters.
And not everyone in San Mateo embraced the Bay Meadows vision. While an effort to block the development through referendum failed to qualify for the ballot, a small group of neighbors opposed to density stalled it for years with lawsuits and appeals.
“We were terrorized for a decade by people that said that we were creating a new Manhattan,” Meany said. “They delayed us right into the Great Recession.”
The development originally proposed nine-story buildings — the height of the racetrack grandstands — but Wilson Meany and Stockbridge eventually agreed to cap all the structures at five stories. “We were proposing to do what California said it wanted, and yet we were not allowed to build buildings that were as tall as the building we were tearing down,” Meany said. Stockbridge, alongside its development partner, Wilson Meany, originally purchased the Bay Meadows horse track in 1997.
“When we acquired the site, the horse racing industry was in decline, and we knew people and companies would be excited to live and work in a community with easy access to the surrounding Bay Area,” said Terry Fancher, chief executive officer of Stockbridge.
Rosanne Foust, CEO of the San Mateo County Economic Development Association, called the project “a catalyst for what really great urban infill development can bring to a community.”
“It was well thought out and well planned and well executed,” she said. “I go to coffee there. I go to the brewery and see so many families with their children, community members of all ages. I know of people who live at Bay Meadows who weren’t in favor of it.”
Yusuf Karadogan, owner of Bahche Mezzehouse and Wine Bar, which operates a full-service restaurant and also delivers food across a plaza to Fieldwork, grew up four blocks from Bay Meadows. He signed a lease in August and has been busy serving lamb chops, souvlakis and grilled octopus since the day he opened. He said the clientele is about half residents and half office workers. “It’s become a destination spot for AI and VC to have lunch and dinner meetings,” he said. “Today we have 25 people from Gilead for lunch.” Karadogan never went to the horse track but remembers walking around it as a child.
“This part of San Mateo needed something like this,” he said. “It has elevated the neighborhood and created a new pocket where people can come find variety. There are so many parks and patios where parents can bring pets, have a glass of wine, and their kids can run around or play on the swings.”
Bay Meadows is not the only foray by Stockbridge and Wilson Meany into the redevelopment of a racetrack. Stockbridge acquired Hollywood Park in Southern California in 2005 and spent 10 years planning and obtaining entitlements to build a 300-acre project that today includes SoFi Stadium, home of the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers, offices, residences, restaurants and retail stores, a park, a lake and the 6,000-seat YouTube Theater. Stockbridge and Wilson Meany are also among the groups leading the development of Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island in San Francisco. To date, about 1,000 new homes have been built there, with thousands more expected over the next decade. At Treasure Island, the partnership is “seeking to replicate the same type of energetic, walkable neighborhood that now defines Bay Meadows,’’ Meany said.
“Bay Meadows, Hollywood Park and Treasure Island — all of them are kind of rooted in this thing of, how do we create a place that’s appropriate for the core areas of California?” he said. “The success of Bay Meadows gives us tremendous excitement about the future of Treasure Island.”
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