Brisbane, a city with fewer than 5,000 residents tucked along U.S. 101, is staring down a redevelopment plan that could almost double its housing stock and rewrite its skyline. A long-planned Baylands makeover that would add roughly 2,000 homes and millions of square feet of office and other non-residential space is about to hit its final round of city-level scrutiny. Officials say a Final Environmental Impact Report and a staff-recommended draft specific plan are slated to drop the week of May 11, with Planning Commission hearings in mid-June and a City Council decision likely this fall. If it moves ahead, the proposal would transform miles of shoreline and largely empty industrial land into a dense new extension of town.
What the plan would build
The Baylands Specific Plan covers roughly 684 acres and, according to the City of Brisbane, calls for 1,800 to 2,200 housing units, up to 7 million square feet of non-residential development, and more than 100 acres of parks and open space. The draft specific plan, heading to the public, reflects city staff tweaks to the developer’s proposal and spells out where density would go, including a transit-oriented district at the Bayshore Caltrain station and an expanded web of greenways. The environmental reports are packed with technical studies on traffic, air quality, groundwater and how to safely close and cap the underlying landfill before shovels hit the ground.
Timeline and review process
The city says the Final EIR and a staff-recommended 2026 Draft Specific Plan will be released the week of May 11, with Planning Commission review expected to kick off in mid-June, as reported by SFGATE. “To reach this point, literally tens of thousands of work hours have been expanded by industry experts and city staff,” City Manager Jeremy Dennis said, underscoring just how long the Baylands has been on the local to-do list. Before formal hearings begin, the city plans workshops and public comment windows so neighbors can dig into the details, raise red flags, and argue over tradeoffs.
Public review and hearings
Before the Planning Commission formally takes up the plan, the city intends to host community workshops to walk residents through the proposal and collect feedback, then shift into official hearings once commissioners are ready to weigh in, according to the City of Brisbane. After the commission issues its recommendations, the City Council will hold its own hearings, with a vote anticipated in the fall. Residents are being urged to pore over the DEIR appendices online and can sign up for the city’s weekly “Blast” newsletter to track meeting dates and staff reports. This phase is expected to be the main venue for questions about everything from traffic and school capacity to who pays for the extensive new infrastructure the project would require.
How big a change would it be?
If the Baylands is built at the high end of its proposed range, it would add roughly as many housing units as Brisbane currently has and significantly bump up the city’s population projections, reshaping the feel of the small peninsula community, per SFGATE. A previously published schedule from the developer envisioned the first homes opening in 2027 and a multi-year buildout running through 2031. City officials, though, caution that cleanup work and permitting could delay those dates, meaning the transformation of the Baylands would unfold over a long horizon rather than overnight.
Cleanup, infrastructure and the long tail
The Baylands site sits atop former railyard and landfill property, and the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board signed off on a landfill closure plan in February 2025 that requires an engineered cover, leachate collection, and landfill-gas controls before large-scale development can proceed, according to CEQAnet. Those remediation steps, combined with plans for new roads, a water-recycling facility, a proposed solar field and school sites, are why planners say the full buildout will stretch over many years and why the EIR’s mitigation measures and funding strategies are likely to get intense scrutiny. With key documents scheduled for release the week of May 11, the coming weeks are expected to mark the most concentrated and consequential public review period the Baylands project has seen yet.
