Some two years after county officials began exploring a revamp of the San Mateo County Event Center, plans for a high-end hotel and improvements to aging facilities on the 48-acre site are slowing taking shape.
As a master planning process for the grounds of the San Mateo County Fair and the Maker Faire comes to a close in the coming weeks and the deadline for developers to submit proposals for a hotel on the site draws nearer, those involved with setting a vision for the key event center between San Francisco and Silicon Valley are feeling a sense of excitement.
For Supervisor Carole Groom, who represents San Mateo and is a former mayor of the city, seeing bids trickle in for a new hotel on the site is a sign efforts to modernize it are coming to fruition. Having set their sights on the Event Center shifting away from consumer-oriented shows and becoming a hub for conferences and business-oriented events, Groom said a proposal like one submitted by a firm to build an office building and hotel there is indicative of the range of other uses the site can accommodate.
“Those buildings have served the community well but they’re a little tired,” she said. “I’m just very excited about the potential and the possibility.”
Located next to the massive Bay Meadows mixed-use development and large, new office buildings coming online nearby, the county-owned site could attract more weekday events as online retailers like Amazon have taken the energy out of large expositions, said Groom. Home to Franklin Templeton Investments and SurveyMonkey headquarters, the private Nueva School, Kaiser Permanente Medical Offices, the 160-acre mixed-use Bay Meadows development will be available to thousands of residents and provide nearly 780,000 square feet of office space once complete.
“There’s not those big expo shows anymore,” she said. “We need to adapt to the times and we need to adapt to the new world.”
Though any plans to build a hotel or other development on the site would go through San Mateo’s public planning process, Event Center CEO Dana Stoehr said the effort to chart a new future for the grounds through the master planning process has already drawn in stakeholders from across the county. Those stakeholders include city officials, residents in nearby neighborhoods and representatives of labor groups and events held there.
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“The whole process has been exceptionally collaborative, open and with a lot of input,” she said.
Stoehr expected the completion of the Event Center’s master plan in the next one or two months to clarify how new developments like a hotel would take shape on the site as facility improvements phase in over time. With a forecast of the next 30 years, the plan is aimed at charting necessary improvements to the site while also building in flexibility so the center can continue to be relevant decades into the future, said Stoehr.
Stoehr said shifts in local transportation patterns will continue to be considered and reevaluated as different aspects of the revamp fall into place. She noted an office building is among the uses officials believe can be accommodated at the site since it would be accompanied by a required number of parking spaces that could be used on weekends for other events.
She added break-out space and meeting rooms are among the improvements officials have pegged for the existing facilities, and emphasized that the master plan will ensure new elements on the site will work with Event Center mainstays like the San Mateo County Fair and the Maker Faire.
“We have 48 acres, that’s a lot of real estate to work with,” she said.
Well, you can now see how the "business" community, in plain sight, takes over public space with the help of the politicians.
Groom said a proposal like one submitted by a firm to build an office building and hotel there is indicative of the range of other uses the site can accommodate.
“Those buildings have served the community well but they’re a little tired,” she said.
How are hotels AND office space supposed to serve the community, Carol? .......And are you tone deaf to the mismatch of residential to commercial development in the City of San Mateo and the rest of the County?
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Well, you can now see how the "business" community, in plain sight, takes over public space with the help of the politicians.
Groom said a proposal like one submitted by a firm to build an office building and hotel there is indicative of the range of other uses the site can accommodate.
“Those buildings have served the community well but they’re a little tired,” she said.
How are hotels AND office space supposed to serve the community, Carol? .......And are you tone deaf to the mismatch of residential to commercial development in the City of San Mateo and the rest of the County?
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Keep the discussion civilized. Absolutely NO personal attacks or insults directed toward writers, nor others who make comments.
Keep it clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
Don't threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Anyone violating these rules will be issued a warning. After the warning, comment privileges can be revoked.