True Life Seeks Alameda Shopping Center Redevelopment

Residents in one Alameda neighborhood could lose their only grocery store and shopping center to hundreds of new residences.

Denver-based developer The True Life Companies filed a preliminary application to build more than 300 homes on the site of the Harbor Bay Landing shopping center, the San Francisco Business Times reported. The property owner is Harbor Bay Landing LLC, purportedly a Burlingame-based private real estate investor.

The retail complex is anchored by a Safeway, the only grocery store on Bay Farm Island. Though the grocery store provides a critical food store for locals, Harbor Bay Landing has become increasingly vacant as tenants have closed up shop in recent years. In the City of Alameda’s housing element, officials identified Harbor Bay as an ideal site to build new housing in order to meet its state-mandated housing goals.

The location was indicated by the city as one of its community mixed-use combining districts, which encourages developers to include ground-floor retail and space for a grocery store in their plans. True Life is looking to get around that by requesting a concession to waive the mixed-uses requirement in their plans.

True Life plans to demolish the existing 130,000 square feet of commercial space to clear the way for 305 new homes. Of those, 88 would be rental apartments and 217 would be for-sale townhomes.

The residences would include 50 units set aside for affordable housing, 22 of which would be designated for moderate-income residents, 12 at the low-income level and 16 at the very-low-income level. In Alameda County, moderate income is generally defined as a maximum of $134,250 for one person, while low-income is a maximum of $87,550 and very-low-income is less than $55,950.

By including affordable units in its plan, True Life will be able to bypass certain requirements for the project. The plan applies SB 330, which streamlines the entitlement process, locks in current planning code laws and limits the number of public hearings on a project in an effort to get shovels in dirt faster.

It wouldn’t be True Life’s first proposal in the Bay Area.

In 2023, True Life filed a pre-application to demolish the Las Positas Office Plaza in the Hacienda Business Park in Pleasanton and build housing in its place. In that proposal, the developer would replace the 110,000-square-foot office complex with 146 units. That plan is presumably dead in the water, though another developer, N17, filed an application in August to build 112 for-sale townhomes there.

True Life also at one point aimed to build a 189-unit condo development in Hayward. That proposed project included 123 townhomes consisting of three- and four-bedroom units, 10,800 square feet of ground-floor commercial space, an urban park and a dog park.

— Chris Malone Méndez