The 76 station at Harbor Bay Landing stopped selling gas on November 30, 2025. The owners could not afford new underground storage tanks by the state's end-of-December deadline, so the pumps went cold. For a few weeks, that felt like the story. It was not. The closed pump is a signal from the parcel that runs almost every errand on this side of the bridge, and the negotiation over what happens to that parcel next will shape what a Tuesday afternoon on Bay Farm looks like for the next decade.
If you live here, you already know the shorthand. Harbor Bay Landing is the shopping center on Island Drive with the Safeway, the CVS that closed, the La Val's, the La Penca Azul, the Angel Fish sushi at 883 Island Drive, the UPS Store, the coffee shop, the dry cleaner. It is 9.6 acres. It is the only retail commercial development permitted in the area. And in the last twelve months it has been the subject of a proposal, a public revolt, a withdrawal, and a quieter negotiation that is still going.
The parcel that runs the errands
On September 26, 2025, The True Life Companies filed a preliminary application to replace the shopping center with 305 housing units at 867 Island Drive. The mix as filed was 217 townhome-style dwellings and 88 apartments, with 50 of those units set aside as affordable homes. Parking for 575 cars. No retail.
That last part is what turned a planning filing into a community meeting. When roughly 120 homeowners jammed a Chamber of Commerce room on October 23 to talk with Councilmember Greg Boller, the conversation was less about density and more about groceries. If the plan went through as filed, residents would need to cross the Bay Farm Island Bridge for a gallon of milk. City Manager Jennifer Ott ended up talking with the overflow crowd outside the room.
A timeline worth keeping in one place
- September 26, 2025 — True Life files preliminary application PREPLN25-0029 for 305 units, no retail.
- October 18, 2025 — City of Alameda posts publicly that the proposal does not meet City requirements and that staff have met with Safeway to express support for retaining a grocery store on the site.
- October 23, 2025 — Community hearing at the Chamber of Commerce; more than 120 residents attend.
- November 21, 2025 — True Life's Director of Land Acquisition Tim Woloshyn emails the City withdrawing the preliminary application, writing that the company continues to work with the property owner on a plan reflecting community feedback.
- November 30, 2025 — The Harbor Bay 76 station shuts down its pumps.
The withdrawal is not the end of the story. Under SB 330, a preliminary application locks in the zoning rules in effect at filing, provided a formal application follows within 180 days. Pulling the preliminary application resets that clock; it does not remove the site from play.
What the zoning actually says
Here is the piece most of the online commentary got wrong. The site was rezoned in 2023 to comply with the state's Regional Housing Needs Allocation. Alameda's share is 5,353 units. The Harbor Bay Landing zoning permits about 300 new homes on the parcel, and it also requires 90,000 square feet of commercial space, including a roughly 20,000-square-foot grocery store. That grocery requirement is written into the zoning, not offered as a favor.
The city has said, publicly and directly, that any redevelopment must include a grocery store consistent with that zoning. Following the withdrawal, planning staff met with the developer, who then agreed to sit down with Safeway to explore keeping the store on site. Whether that produces a mixed-use plan, a phased rebuild around Safeway, or a longer standoff is the open question. At the October meeting, one attendee reported hearing that Safeway may leave when its lease expires in roughly two years. The city has not confirmed that timing.
For a resident, the practical read is this: the grocery is not going anywhere on a preliminary application. It could, however, be affected by a lease expiration the city has less leverage over than the zoning code. Those are two different clocks, and they are not synchronized.
The other construction site people forget about
While attention has been on Island Drive, a different kind of change is already in the ground on Harbor Bay Parkway. Just off the intersection with Ron Cowan Parkway, at 1123 Harbor Bay Parkway, a co-branded Hilton Garden Inn and Homewood Suites broke ground with 229 rooms, more than 130,000 square feet, and an estimated construction budget of $42 million. The developer is Mississippi-based Southern Hospitality Services, led locally by the Patel family. Alameda Chamber and Economic Alliance President Madlen Saddik spoke at the groundbreaking. The building will include a restaurant with a full bar open to the public, plus event meeting space.
For anyone who has ever tried to book a room near Oakland International for visiting relatives, this changes the arithmetic. The current nearest options at the business park are the Hampton Inn and Suites Oakland Airport-Alameda about a tenth of a mile from the office buildings, and an Extended Stay America under half a mile away. Adding 229 rooms plus a public restaurant to a corner most residents drive past on the way to the ferry is a meaningful shift in the daily texture of that side of the island, and it is happening on a two-year construction timeline.
A tennis club becoming a preschool
The third piece of the puzzle is Harbor Bay Club, the ten-acre facility on the northwest side of the island with tennis courts, pools, spa, and children's center that has sat in an awkward middle ground for years. Its new owner, referred to in local coverage as Chop, bought the property with an explicit no-housing-redevelopment pledge, after a prior owner had pursued that path as recently as 2022.
The near-term plan is more surprising than a renovation. Small Size Big Mind Infant Care and Preschool is converting the clubhouse into its fourth campus, aiming to open in 2026 with an initial class of about 60 students. A second Small Size Big Mind location on the main island, at the former Alameda Baptist Church at 3100 Central Avenue in the East End, is targeted for the following summer. The preschool revenue is intended to fund upgrades to the fitness club rather than replace it. Cosmetic work on locker rooms and existing space is ahead of any new pool.
What has not changed, and probably will not
The reason people put up with a shopping-center soap opera and an airport a mile away is the perimeter. The Bay Farm Island Shoreline Trail is still a flat six-mile loop with mile markers, Shoreline Park on the north side, and long views of the Bay Bridge and San Francisco. The 1995 pedestrian and bicycle bridge that parallels the 1953 vehicle drawbridge on State Route 61 remains, per Yelp reviewers who like this sort of trivia, the only drawbridge in the United States used exclusively by cyclists and pedestrians. The Harbor Bay Ferry still runs commuters into the San Francisco Ferry Building in roughly 25 to 30 minutes. Godfrey Park, Tillmark Park, Shoreline Park, Corica's 36 holes with Jim's On the Course for a burger after nine, all steady.
That steadiness is worth naming, because the loudest changes on Bay Farm are in the interior of the island — the shopping center, the parkway, the clubhouse. The edge is the constant. Residents who oriented their weekly rhythm around the shoreline rather than the strip mall are less exposed to what happens at 867 Island Drive than the online commentary might suggest.
What to actually watch
Three dates matter for anyone paying close attention. First, whether True Life submits a formal application within 180 days of its September 26 filing, which would put a decision point in the spring window. Second, the roughly two-year Safeway lease horizon, which is a private commercial matter but sets the outside boundary on grocery continuity. Third, the completion of the Hilton Garden Inn and Homewood Suites, projected at a bit under two years from the groundbreaking, which will add the first meaningful hospitality footprint at the business park in a generation.
None of these is a headline on its own. Together, they are the reason Bay Farm is going to feel different by 2027 without a single new residential tower.
If you are watching how these shifts move value on your block, or planning around a lease, a school year, or a move, the team at Sophia Niu Group tracks these parcels the way residents do, one intersection at a time. Request a free home valuation and neighborhood consultation, and we will walk you through what is actually changing within a mile of your front door.
