Across the Bay Area’s major cities, developers looking to turn empty office buildings into homes are mostly trying to save what’s already there — gutting downtown high-rises and rebuilding them as apartments. But San Ramon is taking a different approach: tearing down its office parks and starting over.
While San Francisco has struggled to get any office-to-housing construction underway, the Tri-Valley city already has 1,501 units either under construction or approved on land where office buildings are coming down, with many in the sprawling Bishop Ranch office parks that once housed Chevron’s headquarters.
The city has gone further, approving a master plan to demolish the oil giant’s old offices entirely to build 2,452 units there. It’s a bet that has made San Ramon a regional leader in a very specific kind of real estate shift that few other cities have figured out how to pull off…