Fremont has a Tesla plant, roughly 900 manufacturers and some of the busiest advanced-manufacturing payrolls on the West Coast, but it has never had a real downtown. That could start to change under a plan taking shape at the city’s BART station, where a developer team wants to build 643 homes on parking lots just north of the tracks.
BART’s board of directors has selected Pacific Development and Affirmed Housing to build the project on about 12 acres of station parking in Fremont, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, which reported that the complex would include 176 affordable residential units. The Chronicle’s J.K. Dineen reports the project is envisioned as a triangular complex of three buildings that would sit a 10-minute walk from Capital Avenue, the corridor the city has designated as its main mixed-use retail and residential spine.
The scale of what’s being discussed lines up with action BART’s board already took. Directors voted 9-0 on Oct. 22 to open exclusive negotiations with Pacific Development and Affirmed Housing for a mixed-income project and public plaza at the Fremont station, according to Coastside News, which reported BART owns nearly 8 acres for the first phase of the larger Fremont site. That outlet described the proposal as a market-rate building paired with a family-affordable building and about 5,200 square feet of nonresidential space, with the exclusive negotiating agreement running 30 months and carrying an option for an additional 18.
Why Fremont Never Got a Center of Gravity
Fremont was formed in 1956 through the merger of Centerville, Niles, Irvington, Mission San Jose and Warm Springs, and its population grew 125% over the following 50 years, per the Chronicle’s reporting. The city now spans about 90 square miles and is home to roughly 225,000 residents, but that sprawling, merger-born geography is part of why it never developed a traditional downtown core…