During the peak of popularity for the Tanforan mall in San Bruno, the shopping center was bustling with people. Bay Area visitors might have grabbed an Orange Julius, taken family portraits at JCPenney and shopped for back-to-school outfits at Sears. But by May 2025, black, red and white liquidation sale signs covered the windows of these once-busy shops.
JCPenney was one of the last holdouts but shuttered in 2025. Earlier this year, Barnes and Noble closed its location in the nearly 1 million-square-foot enclosed mall. Before then, in 2019, Sears announced that the Tanforan location was closing its doors.
Now, a proposal is moving forward to transform the mall and, in turn, the Peninsula suburb of roughly 42,000 just south of San Francisco. A mixed-use “transit village” would take its place, with up to 1.8 million square feet of life sciences labs and offices and as many as 1,500 units of housing rising up to seven stories…