Straddling San Francisco’s southern border could be the city’s next big neighborhood.
Much of the site is technically part of Brisbane, the tiny town visible from Highway 101, but a slice of it is slated for SF’s side of the border. It will all be a few minutes’ walk from a Caltrain station — then a 10-minute ride to the South of Market terminus — as well as a quick drive if there’s no traffic.
A former garbage dump and railyard, the Baylands is 680 acres of empty land squeezed between 101, Bayshore Boulevard, the Recology headquarters and a saltwater lagoon. It’s supposed to create 3,800 new homes split between SF and San Mateo counties, some 60 percent of them rentals, plus 6.5 million square feet of commercial and retail space.
But even among Bay Area development debacles, the Baylands stands out. Have a guess at the year of this San Mateo County Times headline: “Baylands site may finally be set for development.”
That was 2004. Its status as a former dump is only part of the problem. There’s also been politics, economic busts, and neighborhood opposition from Brisbane residents, who in the two decades since, have seen their town grow 30 percent to nearly 5,000 people and the median price of a home double to more than $1 million.
In SF’s nearby District 10, the median home price is nearly double what it was 20 years ago as well.
Sometime this year, Brisbane’s city council is supposed to vote to approve the Baylands plan, marking a crucial juncture at which this new neighborhood stops being just a proposal and becomes a work in progress.
Those hearings will probably begin this fall. How many of them will there be? As many as necessary, says Councilmember Cliff Lentz: “It’s a complex property. We’re basically designing a new city within our city.”
Lentz has been on the city council for 16 years. He was around in 2018, when threats of a state takeover of the project prompted Brisbane voters to approve Measure JJ. It officially amended the city’s general plan to allow the Baylands development. Before that, some Brisbane residents were pushing to eliminate all housing from the plan.
With a lot of luck, the developer Universal Paragon Corporation could start building homes to mark Measure JJ’s 10th anniversary in 2028. But YIMBYs allege the city has missed at least one significant self-imposed deadline this year, and housing advocates aren’t waiting anymore. They’re petitioning the state to renew those old threats if Brisbane doesn’t get the show on the road.
Both sides of the county line
“Brisbane’s housing element is reliant on just one project: The Baylands,” says Ali Sapirman, policy manager at the Housing Action Coalition.
She’s referring to the blueprint that all California cities must produce every eight years. When they don’t show the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) that they’re on track to meet their housing goals, HCD watchdogs can enact penalties, including one called the Builder’s Remedy that essentially suspends all local limitations on development.
Sapirman’s group and YIMBY Law have petitioned HCD to invoke the remedy in Brisbane, calling the town “perennially behind on commitments” to the project.
HCD has yet to respond. YIMBYs also asked HCD for an investigation of Brisbane’s deadline delinquency in 2023, but the state cleared the city of those charges.
Brisbane council members we spoke with declined to comment on the criticism.
“Anyone who has ever stopped at the Bayshore Caltrain station is really confused, because you step out in the middle of nowhere,” Sapirman tells The Frisc, referring to the station, which straddles the SF-San Mateo county line, that could one day service thousands of Baylands residents. (Although the city’s trash and recycling contractor Recology might object to her description; its headquarters and main trash and recycling depot are steps away from the station.)
The station is one of the quietest in the Caltrain system, with an average weekend ridership of just 124 last fiscal year.
Someday it could service thousands of new residents. In addition to some 3,800 homes, developer UPC is proposing nearly 6.5 million square feet of office space, 102,000 square feet of retail, a school with capacity for 350 students, an 800-room hotel, a 55-acre solar farm, and more than 150 acres of parks and open space, including areas surrounding the existing wetlands and Baylands lagoon.
Of that, more than 1,600 homes (15 percent of them affordable housing) and 47,000 square feet of retail would be in San Francisco around the old Schlage Lock factory in Visitacion Valley.
The SF side offers nearly as much housing as Brisbane and two parks but on a much smaller plot of land.
But it seems that the SF side has hit snags that movement on the Brisbane side might solve. In 2018, San Francisco and Universal Paragon agreed upon the cityside portion, but according to a 2025 update, groundbreaking is “delayed pending improved market conditions that will allow the project to be financially feasible.”
UPC has renovated the old Schlage Lock headquarters, but otherwise the SF part of the Baylands plan has been static for years, SF Planning chief of staff Dan Sider tells The Frisc, adding that this is typical of the arrested state of new development in the city these days.
In its 2025 update, Universal Paragon says a green light in Brisbane would help unstick the SF side of the project too.
The bay next door
San Francisco used much of the Baylands site as a landfill until the late 1960s, and the area was also subject to contamination by a onetime Southern Pacific railyard.
By 2004, UPC had already spent an estimated $20 million on decontamination. The Baylands’ environmental impact report lays out more plans to avert potential health hazards, such as venting methane gas from the former dump and decontaminating soil removed from the site — as well as the tools and vehicles used to move the soil.
That’s not good enough for a Brisbane-centric campaign dubbed Too Big Too Toxic Too Expensive. TBTE is an offshoot of UNITE HERE Local 2, a hotel and restaurant worker union whose members are critical of the Baylands plans.
“The soil itself is producing potentially harmful gas vapors,” the TBTE site says, encouraging higher cleanup standards. Asked for comment, TBTE spokesperson Cynthia Gomez forwarded a complaint letter the group sent to the city council on June 3.
The developer’s environmental plan describes a “vapor barrier and a gas venting system” in buildings over the sites where methane vapors are present.
In addition to citing contaminants, the letter also criticizes the plan for an “imbalance” of too much commercial space and not enough housing.
Another critic, the Sierra Club, worries about the site’s proximity to the bay and rising sea levels. The club’s Eileen McLaughlin says UPC’s promise to leave a buffer of wetlands between the development and bay’s edge is a smart countermeasure, but she wants a permanent ban on developing the buffer area. “There’s not enough forward thinking,” McLaughlin says.
In its environmental review, the state says there’s enough buffer now to counter 100 years of expected encroachment, and there’s potential for more countermeasures as long as the wetlands and other underdeveloped areas remain.
Asked to comment on the environmental criticism, UPC vice president Stephanie Shakofsky emailed a statement that read, in part, “our proposal reflects decades of environmental analysis and thoughtful analysis.”
The email did not address the YIMBY-HAC anger over the development’s glacial pace and their attempt to get the state to invoke the Builder’s Remedy. HAC’s Sapirman says a company like UPC is unlikely to use the Builder’s Remedy for a project as big as the Baylands for political reasons, but cities hate sacrificing local control over new development.
Brisbane officials also declined to comment directly on the critiques from either flank. Council member Frank Kern preferred to focus on good news: “We’re really excited about the project right now, there’s so much positive movement.”
UPC will hold its last public information meeting about the Baylands on June 25. After that, the Brisbane city council will hold its own hearings. No dates have been set, but council members say they’re likely to start in the fall.
