Hillsdale Shopping Center history

[Chuck5000]

The mall is tired and poorly planned - its upcoming rebuild is needed. But the sad thing is that this mall would be an outstanding location to build a mini-city with badly-needed housing, and maybe schools also. Would be great for the region, and for San Mateo - the parcel is large enough. Instead, we will get more and newer retail. Wonderful!!! Terrible land use of a valuable asset, lost for another 30 years.

[FC76-81]

Originally Posted by Chuck5000

The mall is tired and poorly planned - its upcoming rebuild is needed. But the sad thing is that this mall would be an outstanding location to build a mini-city with badly-needed housing, and maybe schools also. Would be great for the region, and for San Mateo - the parcel is large enough. Instead, we will get more and newer retail. Wonderful!!! Terrible land use of a valuable asset, lost for another 30 years.

Mini city? I sure hope not. Isn't the entire previous Bay Meadows property enough already?

[FC76-81]

Originally Posted by BayAreaHillbilly

Great memory there. Was Farrell's where Jack's is now (and Lyon's was) or was it in the strip mall, in the space where ... well, well, last I was there ... Windy City Pizza is (or was?).

BTW -there used to be Farrell's all over the Bay Area back in the day ...

Farrell's was where Windy City Pizza is now. Windy City used to be where Starbucks in Belmont on Ralston and El Camino is now, but it's a new building now. Also in that area of highway 92 and El Camino, I remember how lively that area was on Friday and Saturday nights......cruise nights. Between the Hillsdale Cinema and the intersection of 17th right past 92.

[Chuck5000]

Originally Posted by FC76-81

Mini city? I sure hope not. Isn't the entire previous Bay Meadows property enough already?

The entire region needs to add hundreds of thousands of units. Bay Meadows is underbuilt given all the land.. San Mateo is only acting like all the other cities in the bay area - doing the absolute minimum.

Regardless, I think a beautiful large urban-style development there, offices and apartments, with school and parks, right next to transit, remember, would only improve property values and schools in San Mateo. Even a brand new "nice" mall will be comparably less nice and worse for traffic and do nothing for the region's housing crisis or San Mateo's school crowding.

[FC76-81]

Originally Posted by Chuck5000

The entire region needs to add hundreds of thousands of units. Bay Meadows is underbuilt given all the land.. San Mateo is only acting like all the other cities in the bay area - doing the absolute minimum.

Regardless, I think a beautiful large urban-style development there, offices and apartments, with school and parks, right next to transit, remember, would only improve property values and schools in San Mateo. Even a brand new "nice" mall will be comparably less nice and worse for traffic and do nothing for the region's housing crisis or San Mateo's school crowding.

If you eliminated the root causes to a few of these issues you mention, we'd not have to tear down a nice place for hands-on face to face shopping, entertainment, and socializing. Yeah put up a mini city instead and then everyone can sit on their computer for shopping, entertainment and on-line socializing. Plus gain a few pounds in the process. I think you can order food on line too.

[BayAreaHillbilly]

Originally Posted by Chuck5000

The entire region needs to add hundreds of thousands of units. Bay Meadows is underbuilt given all the land.. San Mateo is only acting like all the other cities in the bay area - doing the absolute minimum.

Regardless, I think a beautiful large urban-style development there, offices and apartments, with school and parks, right next to transit, remember, would only improve property values and schools in San Mateo. Even a brand new "nice" mall will be comparably less nice and worse for traffic and do nothing for the region's housing crisis or San Mateo's school crowding.

Bay Meadows is a complete debacle. It will never reach its potential and by the time the last phases are completed we'll be in yet another bust of the boom-bust cycle. Meanwhile there is all sorts of blight along El Camino - prime candidates for tear down and replacement with Wilshire / Santa Monica Blvd style density.

[Hemlock140]

I was a young boy in San Bruno, and remember well the monkey cages at the Edwards Junior Bootery in San Bruno, probably the same company? I loved that spider monkey, and asked my parents if I could get one (No!). I also remember going to Hillsdale for the very elaborate Christmas displays. Our pediatrician was in Burlingame, Dr. Gans, who was very old at the time, and I remember as a teen going to her retirement party though by then we lived in Lafayette.

[FC76-81]

Originally Posted by BayAreaHillbilly

Bay Meadows is a complete debacle. It will never reach its potential and by the time the last phases are completed we'll be in yet another bust of the boom-bust cycle. Meanwhile there is all sorts of blight along El Camino - prime candidates for tear down and replacement with Wilshire / Santa Monica Blvd style density.

Yeah you remember how fast they tore it all down? And then waited for at least 4 or 5 years to start any work on it.

Sort of reminds me of back when I was on the Midway. We lost the use of one of our aircraft elevators so we pulled back into Subic. The Filipino workers tore it all apart in a mater of a few days but then sat around for two months doing absolutely nothing. Because they had an agenda. The battle group being in Subic meant millions of dollars going into the local community. We ended up shorting up everything they tore down and limped back to Yoko where the JN's had us back on line in just a matter of weeks. Want to learn anything impressive from successful large scale projects? Check out the Japanese and how they get the job done. I'm sure there are others with similar success, but I've only got first hand experiences with the Japanese and how they get building projects done. From the overall company culture, to each worker.

It seems the planners of this high speed rail project want a similar success like the bullet train is in Japan, but they can't have one without the other.