If you drive El Camino Real near Highway 92, you know this corner. I've spent more than five decades watching Peninsula properties change hands and change shape, and proposals like this one tend to raise the same handful of questions. Here are the answers, based on the application and the city's own statements.
What is being proposed at El Camino Real and Borel Avenue?
The site is 1700 S. El Camino Real in San Mateo, a 3.1-acre parcel fronting El Camino Real between Borel Avenue and Bovet Road. Today it holds a five-story office building and a surface parking lot. Under the proposal, both would be demolished.
In their place, the plans show two eight-story rental buildings, each about 95 feet tall. Together they would hold 441 apartments with 625 bedrooms. Put simply, one office building and its parking lot would be replaced by two residential buildings and 441 homes.
The surroundings help frame the scale. Safeway, Borel Square and a 76 station are close by. A bank building sits on Bovet Road, and a single-family neighborhood borders the area.
The applicant is JEMCOR Development Partners, a San Mateo developer of affordable housing whose office is actually in the building on the site. KTGY is the architect, and MJS Landscape Architecture is handling the landscape design. JEMCOR is in contract to buy the property, and the current owner authorized the application.
What kind of apartments are planned?
This is really two different communities on one site, each with its own building, parking and amenities.
The market-rate building: 253 apartments
- 136 one-bedrooms, about 690 to 990 square feet
- 88 two-bedrooms, about 960 to 1,190 square feet
- 29 three-bedrooms, about 1,320 to 1,370 square feet
- Average size of about 920 square feet
The amenity list is extensive. It includes a 50-by-22-foot pool and spa on a fourth-floor courtyard deck with fire pits, a barbecue counter, outdoor dining and a fireside lounge. There are also two internal courtyards, a fitness center of about 4,650 square feet, co-working spaces, a club room and lounge, a mail and parcel room, and a leasing office.
Parking is a 353-space garage on the lower three floors, all above ground. Each apartment's assigned space comes with a Level 2 EV charging outlet. Whether that parking is rented separately from the apartment has not been decided. The building also plans 290 long-term bike spaces.
The senior building: 188 affordable apartments
- 150 one-bedrooms, about 630 to 740 square feet
- 38 two-bedrooms, about 930 to 1,130 square feet
- Average size of about 750 square feet
These are deed-restricted senior rentals for households earning 80% of the area median income or less. A few units are set aside for on-site managers. Amenities include a second-floor courtyard and a rooftop deck.
Parking is 103 spaces on a basement level and the ground floor, roughly one space for every two apartments, plus about 100 bike spaces. Where an apartment has a space, it is included in the rent, because the financing requires it.
One thing missing from every document: rents. None have been published for either building, so any figure you hear secondhand is a guess.
A note on parking. The site sits about half a mile from the Hayward Park Caltrain station. That close to transit, state law does not require any parking at all. The developer is providing 456 spaces across both buildings anyway. For neighbors worried about cars spilling onto side streets, that is a meaningful detail.
Why is all the affordable housing in one building?
San Mateo's Below Market Rate program requires 15% of the units in a rental project to be affordable to lower-income households. Applied to the 253 market-rate apartments, that would mean 38 affordable units mixed in among them.
JEMCOR proposed something different: put all the affordable housing in the senior building. That is 188 apartments, five times the 38 the rule would require. City staff also pointed to San Mateo's goal of adding more senior housing as a reason to support it.
The senior building would be financed with private-activity tax-exempt bonds and low-income housing tax credits. No City or County money is involved.
The obvious concern with splitting a project this way is that the affordable half could quietly slip behind schedule. The city built in a safeguard. If the project is approved, the market-rate building cannot get its certificate of occupancy, the sign-off that lets people move in, until the senior building has its building permit and construction has started. The affordable building cannot be left for later.
Is it approved? What did the October 5 vote actually decide?
No, the project is not approved. On October 5, 2026, the City Council approved the developer's plan for meeting the affordable-housing requirement. It was reported as a unanimous vote. City staff were explicit that this is not approval of the project itself. Think of it as clearing the first hurdle, with the main review still ahead.
Here is the timeline so far:
- March 2026: Formal application filed
- March 17, 2026: Neighborhood meeting on Zoom, with about 41 residents signed in
- July 30, 2026: Application deemed complete
- September 28, 2026: City sent the developer its consistency letter, reviewing the plans against city standards
- October 5, 2026: Council approved the affordable-housing plan
Two pieces of background explain why the review is moving the way it is.
First, the application was filed under the state Housing Crisis Act, often called SB 330. In plain terms, it locks in the city's rules, standards and fees as they stood when the preliminary application was filed.
Second, the zoning. The site is zoned for an executive office park today. But San Mateo's General Plan 2040, fully in effect since voters passed Measure T in November 2024, designates it Mixed-Use High. That allows buildings of up to eight stories along this stretch of El Camino Real. So the height is not a request to break the plan. It matches what the city's adopted plan already calls for here.
If you read my post on the downtown project, 94 Units Approved Downtown, this one is a different project at a different stage. This project has not been approved.
What did neighbors ask, and how did the developer answer?
The March 17 meeting drew about 41 residents. Some requests shaped the plans, and some were declined. Here is how each topic landed.
Will the big trees at the corner stay? No. The large trees at Borel and El Camino Real would not be kept. They would be replaced with trees meeting city standards, and an arborist report is part of the application.
Where will the cars go? The market-rate garage exits onto Borel Avenue, keeping cars off busy Bovet Road at peak hours. An internal drive between the two buildings handles garage entry, loading, and fire and garbage trucks. It does not connect through to Bovet Road.
Can the buildings step down toward the houses? Neighbors asked for a design that steps down toward the nearby single-family homes. The developer declined, saying it would substantially cut the number of homes.
Can the open courtyard face Borel instead of Bovet? Neighbors asked to turn the market-rate building's courtyard toward Borel Avenue. The developer kept it facing Bovet Road, saying that orientation limits noise and privacy concerns for the neighboring single-family homes and gives the courtyard more sun.
What about shadows? The plans include a shadow study.
How will construction be managed? A construction management plan covering work hours, dust and erosion control must be approved by the city before building permits are issued.
What about schools and city services? The project pays school impact fees to the local school districts. It also pays the city's child care, park, transportation, wastewater and public art fees.
One point of confusion worth clearing up: the neighboring Safeway site at 1655 S. El Camino Real is being redeveloped separately. Its developer is not connected to this project, and the two are moving through the city on their own tracks.
What happens next, and when could anything change on the street?
The next step is environmental review under CEQA, the state's environmental law. It is under way now. Because the project is consistent with San Mateo's General Plan and zoning, the review builds on the General Plan's earlier environmental study and focuses on effects specific to this project, such as its particular traffic, shadow or construction impacts.
After that comes a Planning Commission public hearing, which city staff expect toward the end of 2026. Owners and tenants within 1,000 feet of the site will get a mailed notice beforehand.
If you live or own near Borel Avenue or Bovet Road, here is the practical move: watch your mailbox for that notice, and check the city's notice for how to take part in the hearing.
As for timing on the street, there is none to report. No construction schedule has been announced. When asked when the current office tenants would have to leave, the developer said it had no accurate timeline yet. Anyone quoting a move-out or completion date is getting ahead of the facts.
If you own nearby, or you're weighing a purchase in the area and want to think through what a proposal like this could mean for a specific property, I'm glad to talk it through at (650) 208-1301 or edstephensrealestate@gmail.com.
The bigger picture is that this corner is a test of how San Mateo's General Plan 2040 plays out on the ground. The plan set the rules for eight stories along El Camino Real. Projects like this one show what those rules actually look like as buildings, and the Planning Commission hearing is the next public step for this proposal.
