Hines To Redevelop East Bay Shopping Center for Mixed Use

The adaptation of a suburban shopping mall in Northern California into a mixed-use community will be the opening phase of a redevelopment of downtown Dublin, according to plans filed by Hines.

The Houston-based developer is planning to build a 35K SF retail building at 7200 Amador Plaza Road, a parcel that is part of Dublin’s Place Shopping Center.

The new building will allow Hines to relocate existing retail tenants so a more ambitious second phase can begin—the redevelopment of the 26-acre shopping center into a mixed-use community that will feature new retail, restaurant and event space, a life sciences and office campus and new housing.

Mall owner American Realty Advisors is partnering with Hines to redevelop the shopping center using a design from architects Gensler, according to a report in the San Francisco Business Times.

The project will resemble Patricia’s Green in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley, which is built around a one-acre green space. It will be walkable from the West Dublin BART Station via a tree-line pedestrian path.

According to a color-coded rendition, the green courtyard will be surrounded by a residential campus with ground-floor retail, affordable senior housing units and a three-building life science campus.

Dublin, an East Bay city, recently finalized its “preferred vision” for the development of the Downtown Dublin Specific Plan, which was adopted in 2019 as a blueprint for the redevelopment of the rest of the nearly 300-acre Specific Plan area. According to the city, the Specific Plan envisions the addition of more than 2,500 new homes and 2.2M SF of retail space.

American Realty Advisors purchased the Dublin’s Place Shopping Center in 2015, but delayed initiation of redevelopment during the pandemic.

The largest project currently under construction in the East Bay is a 772-bed apartment-style student housing project for UC Berkeley that is being designed, built and funded by the Helen Diller Foundation on a site directly across from the western entrance to the campus on Oxford Street.

The 500K SF building—which will be named the Helen Diller Anchor House—will be gifted to the university upon its completion and is scheduled to open in time for the 2024-2025 academic year.

Rent for each housing unit will be below market rate and the building will require no public funds to construct and operate. Net income from the property will perpetually fund scholarships for low-income students.

The Anchor House units will be reserved for transfer students. According to UC Berkeley, 21% of all Berkeley undergraduates are transfers who often can’t find affordable housing near the campus.