FEATURE ARTICLE, OCTOBER 2004

A DYNAMIC PLAN FOR TANFORAN
Wattson Breevast is providing exciting new reasons to visit an historic property on the San Francisco Peninsula.
Brian A. Lee

Just as the famous thoroughbred Seabiscuit did on the same property in the 1930s, residents and visitors in the San Francisco Peninsula will no doubt race to experience The Shops at Tanforan when it opens in fall 2005.

The Shops at Tanforan, a Wattson Breevast development, will open fall 2005.

Located in San Bruno, California, on the former site of the Tanforan Racetrack, the $140 million open-air shopping center redevelopment will offer a one-stop shopping, dining and entertainment experience just 12 miles south of the City by the Bay. Consumers will be drawn to The Shops at Tanforan’s appealing mix of retail tenants, its upscale contemporary design and fresh, lively atmosphere. And given its proximity to Interstate 380, rapid transit and San Francisco’s airport, it will be a breeze getting there.

Wattson Breevast began deconstruction of the old Tanforan Park Shopping Center in February, having already pre-leased about 35 percent of the project. As of late June, that pre-leasing figure had reached approximately 65 percent of the planned 1.1 million-square-foot center. Anchors Sears, JC Penney and Target have remained open during the redevelopment. Because of the nature of the project, the inline mall tenants could not stay, however. “It was easier for us to empty the mall and rebuild than to try to build around them because it’s not really a remodel [job], it’s a complete tear-down,” says Greg Wattson, senior vice president for Newport Beach, California-based Wattson Breevast. “Except for the steel supporting the structure, everything else is gutted.”

The majority of The Shops at Tanforan tenants will move in come May or June of next year. They include Hot Topic, Bath & Body Works, Charlotte Russe, Guess, American Eagle, Pacific Sunwear and many others. However, a handful of tenants, like BJ’s Chicago Brewhouse, Barnes & Noble, Old Navy and Victoria’s Secret, will move into the center a couple months earlier.

Visitors to The Shops at Tanforan in San Bruno, California, will be able to access the center’s many offerings — including a 20-screen Century Theatres — from the nearby BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station.

Wattson points to tenant performance as the major motivation for the project, which is located in a trade area of 900,000 people, a total that doesn’t include the additional shoppers to the north in San Francisco. “That’s what drove us to this property. The anchors are doing phenomenal,” he says. “In the mall itself, the tenants that were there were kind of the B tenants but they were doing incredible numbers. When we brought General Growth Properties in to do our third-party leasing, their people were amazed at how well some of these stores are doing.”

Built in the early 1970s, Tanforan Park Shopping Center had a lot of deep interior storage space, which had become obsolete. “Our first objective was to recapture that space and bring it into revenue-generating space and create more storefronts,” says Wattson. Wattson Breevast brought in renowned shopping center architect Altoon + Porter Architects to achieve this goal.

On the front, the aim was to bring the mall back out to El Camino Real, the main drag that stretches the length of California. The rear of the old mall, which had been the truck/service area, presented some interesting opportunities. Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) has built a new terminal there as part of a commuter extension from south San Francisco to San Francisco International Airport, located just 3 miles to the southeast of the property.

“This was a wonderful opportunity to create two front doors,” says Wattson. “We had the natural front door, which was always the front door. Then, on the backside, [we could] put in our entertainment, our cinema.”

By extending the development outward to the BART station and new theater, Wattson Breevast was able to divide the old back space and create a whole new leasing corridor with all new storefronts. The main “spine” of the old property remained intact but two new leasing corridors were created, all of which will be reshaped and “re-imaged” to bring a street feel to the old interior mall, says Wattson. The developer will build a three-level parking structure in back, on top of which will rest the 75,000-square-foot, 20-screen Century Theatres cineplex. The theater is scheduled to open in spring 2006.

A life-sized statue of Seabiscuit, already erected on the property, will be repositioned to a more prominent location during the shopping center’s renovation. The property’s history isn’t limited to the famous racehorses that Tanforan Racetrack hosted, however. The facility was also the takeoff site for the first West Coast airplane flight. With its location, impressive list of national retailers, variety of restaurants and entertainment options, and first-class design, The Shops at Tanforan will soon be making its own history on the San Francisco Peninsula.

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