Mall Redevelopment in Silicon Valley

With more and more American malls closing, their potential for redevelopment is growing. In the San Francisco Bay Area, a 400,000-square-foot project will reimagine the former Bayfair Center mall into a research and development center for tech companies.

As Chase Hunter explains in an article on SiliconValley.com, “The mall’s interior officially closed in early 2023, but the loss of Macy’s in April 2024 – a store that had been a tenant since the mall opened in 1957 – marked a turning point as developers focused on creating a new iteration of the property.” The property provides convenient access to existing infrastructure including the power and air conditioning necessary for R&D centers.

The trend is catching on in other parts of Silicon Valley. “In the South Bay, the city of Cupertino agreed in July with the owners of the Vallco Mall property to permit the construction of 2,700 housing units, with about a third set aside for affordable housing. And Prologis, a San Francisco-based real estate company that owns Hilltop Mall in Richmond, hopes to create a data center, a transportation hub and hundreds of housing units in collaboration with the city’s specific plan to redevelop the 145-acre area around the mall.”

Cities are taking notice, in some cases adjusting their zoning codes to make it easier for developers to adaptively reuse malls and encourage transit-oriented, mixed-use development. Meanwhile, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) agency moved up the timeline for a station near Bayfair, “citing the Bay Fair station’s high rankings in development streamlining, market readiness for offices and development capacity.”