A parking lot that currently serves Rivian's local branch at 3300 El Camino Real could soon become the site of an eight-story apartment building with 194 units, paired with a three-story office building, under a new proposal from Stanford University. Of those apartments, 39 — or 20% of the total — would be reserved for households earning up to 80% of the area median income.
The plan, first detailed by Palo Alto Online, calls for 419 total parking spaces split between the two uses: 243 spaces for the residential building and 176 for the office component. The site sits within Stanford Research Park, a sprawling commercial campus near El Camino Real and Hansen Way that is already home to major tenants including Tesla, Lockheed-Martin and SAP.
A Corner Gateway and a Nod to Research Park's Past
According to the application, the office building would be pulled back from the corner of El Camino Real and Hansen Way to create landscaped open space rather than crowding the intersection. In a cover letter accompanying the filing, Ashley Weinstein-Carnes described the office structure as a “corner gateway entrance to Stanford Research Park,” with architecture meant to express the park's culture of technology and innovation, the same letter notes.
The application also points to history on the same stretch of road: it describes the building at 607 Hansen Way as the first structure ever built in Stanford Research Park, grounding the new gateway concept in the site's origins as reported by the outlet.
Why Palo Alto's Rule Change Matters Here
Stanford's project leans on a policy shift Palo Alto made last year. In 2025, the Palo Alto City Council approved a zone change removing the conditional-use-permit requirement for housing at Stanford Research Park, and the university's proposal would be the first project to use those new rules, per the same account. The change falls under the city's El Camino Real Focus Area, which loosens height and density regulations for housing along El Camino Real south of Page Mill Road.
Palo Alto has already counted 3300 El Camino Real in its housing inventory, and the parcel fits into a broader goal: the city aims to add 6,086 housing units by 2031. Stanford's own growth plan envisions building more than 500 housing units for the general public within Research Park over time, with this project representing an early piece of that vision.
A Bigger, Slower-Moving Push Is Also Underway
The 3300 El Camino Real proposal arrives alongside a much larger, separate process. Stanford filed a General Use Permit application with Santa Clara County earlier in 2026, and that updated permit proposed 500 affordable housing units for workers, 2,500 additional student beds and 1.8 million square feet of academic space over time, according to the Stanford Daily. Stanford has said the county's review process and an accompanying environmental impact report are expected to take around two years, with an intended Board of Supervisors vote in 2028.
That timeline tracks with an earlier expectation that major housing growth at Research Park wouldn't arrive until the next Housing Element cycle, set to begin in 2032, Palo Alto Online reported in January 2025. The 3300 El Camino Real project is not Stanford's first attempt to bring housing to this corner of the park, either. Back in 2020, Sand Hill Property Company proposed a five-story residential complex at the same address with 187 apartments and a two-story office building, also offering 20% of units below market rate — a proposal that predates the current, taller version.
Multifamily housing has been a scarce commodity along this stretch of El Camino Real. Palo Alto approved a 57-unit development at El Camino Real and Page Mill Road back in 2018, and as of the 2020 reporting, the city council had approved only one other significant multifamily project in the prior two years: the 59-unit affordable project Wilton Court. Against that backdrop, Stanford's 194-unit pitch represents one of the more substantial housing proposals the Research Park corridor has seen in years.
