Sunset could build 3K homes at former Chevron HQ in San Ramon

Preliminary plans call for 100K of shops and restaurants and a 2.5-acre park

Sunset Development's Alexander Mehran with 6001 Bollinger Canyon Road
Sunset Development's Alexander Mehran with 6001 Bollinger Canyon Road (Getty, Google Maps, Bishop Ranch)

Sunset Development has set sights on building between 2,000 and nearly 3,000 homes alongside shops and restaurants at its 92-acre former Chevron headquarters in San Ramon.

The San Ramon-based developer has filed preliminary plans to build the mixed-use mega complex at the former oil company hub at 6001 Bollinger Canyon Road, the San Francisco Business Times reported.

Sunset, which sold Chevron the land for its East Bay headquarters in 1981, bought it back in September for $174.5 million.

The developer, which owns the Bishop Ranch Business Park next door, has presented three project options to the city’s Planning Commission. Each option includes 97,000 square feet of retail, a 2.5-acre park, a transit center and public open space.

The first option would include 2,030 residential units, including apartments, townhomes and single-family homes. A second option would bump the housing up to 2,300 homes, while the third would build 2,850 homes.  

The second and third project options would include 125,000 square feet of what Sunset calls “vertical mixed-use space.” A map of the second option depicts sizes from two-to-three-story homes and townhouses to six-to-seven story apartment complexes.

The former Chevron campus, which it occupied since 1999, includes 13 office buildings containing 1.3 million square feet.  It’s not clear how many would be razed for the redevelopment.

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Sunset, led by Alexander Mehran Jr., has worked for the last decade to convert the 585-acre Bishop Ranch from a business park to a retail and residential complex the city of San Ramon now views as its downtown. 

The developer views the former Chevron campus as a chance to continue that work.

“People want vitality,” Mehran told the Business Times in December. “And in the suburbs, it’s extremely difficult to figure that out.”

Chevron, as part of the deal to sell its campus, leased 400,000 square feet at 2600 Camino Ramon, a nearly 2 million-square-foot Bishop Ranch office building that once served as offices for AT&T. 

— Dana Bartholomew

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