WALNUT CREEK, CA — There is a piece of downtown that has been approved, re-approved and extended for eight years. And it still looks like a piece of downtown.
The Foundry was supposed to be a 24,000-square-foot food hall at 1250 Locust St. It had two stages, a koi pond, and more food stalls than most cities get in a decade.
It is not there.
What sits there instead is a vacant site near the corner of Mt. Diablo Boulevard, across from the Century Theaters. It is waiting on a construction crew that has never shown up. Patch reported this week that no construction or opening date has been verified, and that it is not certain the project gets built at all.
That is a strange sentence about a project the city signed off on when the Warriors still played at Oracle.
What was supposed to be there
The 2018 design was not modest. A 24,472-square-foot main hall, one story with a mezzanine, roughly 23 ground-floor food stalls and one more upstairs.
Two entertainment stages. A courtyard with outdoor dining, games and a children’s area.
Plus a koi pond, because this is Walnut Creek and we do like a water feature.
The plan also asked for outdoor seating and alcohol service until 11 p.m., subject to city approval.
Twenty-three stalls is not a restaurant. It is a small neighborhood of restaurants, which is exactly why people got excited, and exactly why the silence since has been so loud.
Food halls were the safe bet of that era. One building, many tenants, shared seating, less risk per operator than a standalone lease. If you owned ground-floor space in a suburban downtown in 2018, that was the pitch you were hearing.
The paper trail
The approvals came in a rush, and then they stopped. The Planning Commission recommended the project in July 2018.
The City Council approved the entitlements that August and adopted the rezoning ordinance in September. The Design Review Commission signed off unanimously that December, contingent on more subcommittee review.
Then came the extensions.
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| July 2018 | Planning Commission recommends approval |
| August 2018 | City Council approves project entitlements |
| September 2018 | Rezoning ordinance adopted |
| December 2018 | Design Review Commission approves unanimously, with subcommittee conditions |
| 2019 | Design review extension granted |
| 2021 | Second design review extension granted |
| January 2022 | Draft resolution requests a third extension, through Dec. 18, 2022 |
| October 2026 | No verified construction or opening date |
City records document the 2019 and 2021 extensions. A January 2022 draft resolution asked for a third one-year extension, this one running through Dec. 18, 2022. After that, the public paper trail gets thin.
The developer still says he wants to build it
Brian Hirahara of BH Development is the man behind it. He is also behind the Slice House and Teleferic Barcelona building, and Va de Vi next door. So he is not a newcomer to this stretch of downtown.
He told the Bay Area Telegraph in 2025 that the project was approved before the pandemic and was set to start construction when COVID hit. He said he was still committed, still working on it, and redesigning to make it pencil out.
“I saw a need for public gathering space for community in Walnut Creek, centered around food and drink. Everyone craves that.”
Brian Hirahara, BH Development
What actually changed
The iterations matter, because they are not the same building. Later versions described a multi-story food hall with local vendors, an outdoor beer garden and possibly a rooftop terrace. That is a different animal from a single-story hall wrapped around a courtyard.
Neither one is a building yet.
Parking got handled on paper. Public records show the project would pay an in-lieu fee into city lots instead of building its own spaces. Hirahara noted there are more than 1,500 stalls within a few blocks.
| Original 2018 program | Figure |
|---|---|
| Main food hall footprint | 24,472 sq ft |
| Ground-floor food stalls | About 23 |
| Mezzanine stalls | 1 |
| Entertainment stages | 2 |
| Outdoor features | Courtyard dining, games, children’s area, koi pond |
| Alcohol service | Until 11 p.m., subject to city approval |
| Parking approach | In-lieu fee into city lots |
What happens now
Approvals are not the bottleneck in this town. Measure U, on the Nov. 3 ballot, would flip a 2.4-acre office site at North California and Ygnacio Valley Road to mixed-use residential.
The council cleared an eight-story housing plan for a downtown lot earlier this year. This city says yes with some regularity.
Nobody official will say what happens to this one. Patch asked both the city and the developer for an update this week and had not heard back by publication.
There is also a name problem. Patch’s story noted reports that “The Yard” will be built, which revived speculation about the site. Whether that is this project, a renamed version of it, or something else entirely is one of several things nobody has clarified.
Meanwhile the rest of downtown is not standing still. Putter’s mini golf closes Nov. 29 to make way for a parking lot and a seven-story apartment project.
That deal went from first report to demolition date in a matter of weeks. And the old corner up the street just became a Porsche dealership.
Two sites, two speeds. One moves.
The other has had entitlements since 2018, a developer who says the right things, and nothing on the ground. That gap is the story.
Which makes the Foundry a fair test. If a fully entitled food hall, with an experienced local developer, still cannot get out of the ground, the problem is not zoning.
It is not parking either. And it is not the neighbors.
Here is what makes it worth watching rather than just worth complaining about. The Foundry is the last big piece of the downtown puzzle that was designed for people to sit down in.
Not shop, not park, not commute. Sit.
If it never gets built, Locust Street keeps its hole. Downtown keeps splitting into restaurants on one end and vacancies on the other.
The bottom line
Approved: August 2018, entitlements; September 2018, rezoning
Extended: 2019, 2021, and a January 2022 request through Dec. 18, 2022
Built: Not yet. No verified construction date.
Developer: Brian Hirahara, BH Development
Who to ask: City of Walnut Creek planning staff, and the developer
If you know something about 1250 Locust St. that is not in the public record, you know more than the rest of us do right now. My inbox is open.
