Century at Tanforan is still showing movies. Target, BJ's Restaurant and Planet Fitness are still open. Around them, the indoor mall has been closing one store at a time. JCPenney closed in 2025. Barnes & Noble's last day was Saturday, May 2, after about 20 years there. "It is with great sadness that we confirm the closure of our Barnes & Noble bookstore as our lease has ended," the company wrote, as KRON4 reported in March. In August, KRON4 reported that Shirtique Pro Shop, a sports memorabilia store at Tanforan for more than 30 years, planned to close for good at the end of September. "Now it's time to say goodbye," the shop posted.
Nobody has announced a date for the indoor mall to close. In March, KRON4 said the shopping center had no set closure date, and its August report listed the same four anchors still open. The most detailed public account of what comes next is in two documents the City of San Bruno posted on October 5, 2026, ahead of a Planning Commission hearing with a narrow scope.
October 20 is a hearing on the report, not a vote on the project
On October 5, the City posted the Final Environmental Impact Report and the Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program for the Tanforan Redevelopment Project. The city's announcement says plainly that releasing the Final EIR "does not constitute approval of the proposed project." The upcoming dates, in order:
- Friday, October 16. The Planning Commission's hearing packet is posted on the city's Agenda Center.
- Tuesday, October 20, 7 p.m. Planning Commission public hearing in the second-floor Community Room at the San Bruno Recreation and Aquatic Center.
- November 10. The City expects the City Council to consider certifying the Final EIR.
The Final EIR describes a narrow job for October 20. The Commission is there "to consider the adequacy of the Final EIR." If it finds the document meets the California Environmental Quality Act, it recommends that the City Council certify it. Only after that would city decision-makers decide whether to approve, modify or reject the project itself. If they approve it with impacts the report calls unavoidable, they have to adopt a Statement of Overriding Considerations, which says the project's benefits outweigh those effects. Approval would also require the City to consider an airport land use override for homes inside the SFO noise contour.
One question stays open until the packet is posted: whether the Planned Development zoning or a development agreement will also be on the October 20 agenda. The city's announcement doesn't say.
What the documents already keep, and what they replace
Alexandria Real Estate Equities finished buying the 44-acre site in early 2022, NBC Bay Area reported. A year earlier, the city's 2021 "Reimagining Tanforan" fact sheet had called for office, hotel, retail and entertainment uses and at least 1,000 homes. KRON4 has put the purchase price at roughly $300 million.
The environmental review studies a range of outcomes, not one fixed site plan. According to the city's June 2025 notice of availability for the Draft EIR, the range covers the mall and a parcel at 1292 Huntington Avenue:
| Element | What the environmental review covers |
|---|---|
| Target and its parking garage | Not part of the described demolition |
| Century at Tanforan and its garage | Not demolished; the theater would be remodeled and folded into the new project |
| Apartments | 1,014 to 1,514 units |
| Affordable homes | Up to 200, in a standalone building on the northern part of the site |
| New retail | 111,950 to 211,950 square feet |
| Life-science lab and office | 1,174,000 to 1,723,580 square feet |
| Amenity space | 55,000 to 69,000 square feet |
| Hotel | Optional; 125,000 square feet, 170 rooms |
The office and lab range is where the plan can change the most. At an earlier study session, the San Mateo Daily Journal reported a base concept with a 600-unit market-rate building, a separate 200-unit affordable building, a retail village of about 377,000 square feet that included Target and Century, and three large biotech buildings. About a third of the plan could still go either toward more life science or toward more housing and retail. That account came before the June 2025 Draft EIR, so treat it as an early concept, not the current plan.
So the two businesses many San Bruno households already treat as Tanforan's center, the Target and the movie theater, are the two things the redevelopment is built around. What it would replace is the indoor corridor, and that corridor has been emptying for years.
What construction is expected to sound like on Sneath Lane
The Final EIR names two significant and unavoidable impacts that remain even after mitigation. One is air quality, and it applies to future residents and workers on the site. Modeled cancer risk and fine-particulate levels exceed thresholds in two exposure scenarios. New homes would need MERV-13 or equivalent air filters, but the report doesn't count those filters as reducing modeled exposure.
The other is construction noise outside daytime hours, which affects people who already live nearby. The Final EIR finds this impact significant and unavoidable even with mitigation. Expected measures include:
- A noise-control plan for any permitted work outside normal hours
- A temporary noise barrier for nighttime work within 500 feet of homes
- Equipment noise controls
- Advance notice to neighbors
- A construction liaison to take complaints
The MMRP adds rules for equipment and dust. Off-road diesel equipment over 50 horsepower is required to meet Tier 4 Final standards or be cleaner, electric included. Limited exceptions apply where Tier 4 Final engines are unavailable or infeasible, and in those cases the cleanest feasible standard is required. Exposed ground must be watered three times a day.
Traffic is covered in a May 2025 level-of-service technical memo filed with the environmental review. It identifies four study intersections that project traffic would push to unacceptable levels:
- El Camino Real at westbound I-380
- El Camino Real at Tanforan Way
- Sneath Lane at Sea Biscuit Avenue
- Sneath Lane at National Avenue
The memo says new signal timing could fix three of them. El Camino Real at Tanforan Way would need an additional westbound left-turn lane on the project side.
Walking connections are a separate story. The Final EIR says the links between BART and the Centennial Way Trail across Huntington Avenue and Sneath Lane/Southline Avenue were already being built as part of the Southline project, not as mitigation for Tanforan. How Tanforan itself would connect to BART is left to future Planned Development zoning requirements.
Two memorials, and a plaque that has to move
Before it was a mall, Tanforan was a racetrack. In 1942 it became an assembly center where nearly 8,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans were detained, according to the Tanforan Memorial. Two separate markers of that history are covered by different arrangements.
The first is the Tanforan Memorial, right outside the San Bruno BART station. San Mateo County gives its address as 1151 Huntington Ave. The Tanforan Assembly Center Memorial Committee broke ground on February 11, 2022, and held a ribbon cutting on August 27, 2022. The committee says more than 750 people attended, including nearly 50 former incarcerees and their families. It is already built and sits outside the redevelopment's demolition plans.
The second is the existing Tanforan Assembly Center plaque and commemorative garden on the mall property. The MMRP requires both to be kept and moved to a publicly accessible, visible spot in the future retail village. That requirement is one of the few public-facing parts of the new retail village spelled out in the documents.
What the October documents leave open
Some things a neighbor might want settled aren't in the material released so far. The documents reviewed for this post don't include a building-by-building height schedule, named public plazas, a binding phasing plan, or a construction start date. At a study session, the Daily Journal reported, residents asked the City to seek community benefits for public schools, and the City said benefit negotiations hadn't started yet. No signed community benefits agreement or development agreement with Alexandria turned up in reporting through early October 2026.
The process so far has run in steps. The Draft EIR was open for public comment from June 27 to August 11, 2025, with a public hearing on July 29, 2025. The Final EIR answers the comments from that period. It says those comments raised no new significant impacts and no new alternatives or mitigation measures beyond what the Draft EIR already identified. The packet comes out Friday, October 16, and the Planning Commission meets Tuesday, October 20, at 7 p.m. at the Recreation and Aquatic Center, 251 City Park Way.
If you own a home near Sneath Lane, El Camino Real or Huntington Avenue and want to talk through how the Tanforan timeline might affect your plans, Carmen Miranda has been following this site since the 2021 land use plan and would be glad to go over the documents with you. Let's Connect.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
