Golden Gate Fields Is Becoming Albany's Biggest Park. It Won't Add a Single Housing Unit.

For 80 years, the grandstands at Golden Gate Fields filled with bettors watching horses round the oval a few hundred feet from San Francisco Bay. The track ran its final race in June 2024, and the silence that followed has been louder than most Albany residents expected. Not because the site sat empty, but because of what's happening to it now: a 161-acre parcel, most of it in Albany with about 40 acres spilling into Berkeley, is on track to become one of the largest new public parks on the East Bay shoreline in decades. The Trust for Public Land has an option to buy the property for $175 million and hand it to the East Bay Regional Park District, with the transfer expected to close in spring 2027.

Here's the part that matters if you're comparing Albany to the cities around it: this is the last large, potentially developable parcel in or next to Albany, and it is about to be taken off the table for housing permanently. A 161-acre site is becoming shoreline habitat and trails, not homes. If you're pricing what living near this stretch of the bay will look like in five years, that distinction is the whole story.

Why This Site Didn't Become the Next Bay Meadows

When a racetrack this size closes, the obvious next move is redevelopment. That's exactly what happened at Bay Meadows in San Mateo, a comparable former racing venue that closed in 2008 and is now home to more than 1,000 homes, along with offices, restaurants, a school, and a new Caltrain station.

Golden Gate Fields didn't follow that path, and the reason isn't market conditions. It's a ballot measure. In 1990, Albany voters adopted a rule requiring any change to the site's zoning to go before voters directly. Robert Cheasty, a former Albany mayor and longtime advocate through the group Citizens for East Shore Parks, has pointed to that measure as the reason large-scale housing was never a realistic outcome here, regardless of how many developers wanted in. A 2010 city-adopted planning report reinforced the same direction, calling for three-quarters of the site to remain open space with no housing allowed, and a resident survey at the time found two-thirds opposed adding housing to the property at all.

Two similar sites, two very different endings, and the fork in the road was a voter-approval clause written 35 years ago. That's not a footnote. It's the mechanism that decided this outcome before the racetrack ever closed.

What Zero New Units Means for Albany's Market

Albany is already one of the tightest housing markets in the East Bay. The city covers 1.7 square miles and holds roughly 7,500 housing units, a footprint that leaves almost no room for organic supply growth even before you account for this site. Over the three months ending May 2026, homes sold at a median price of $1.3 million, up 11.4 percent from the same period a year earlier, with homes going under contract in an average of 14 days.

Not every index agrees on direction. Zillow's home value tool, which tracks estimated value across all homes rather than the price of homes that actually changed hands, showed a decline over the same stretch. That gap is worth sitting with for a second: when two respected sources disagree about whether Albany values are rising or falling, the disagreement itself is the signal. It tells you the market is thin enough, and the transaction count small enough, that a handful of sales can swing the headline number in either direction depending on how you measure it. The steadier fact underneath both readings is supply, and that's the fact this park deal locks in rather than loosens.

A 161-acre parcel converting to permanent open space does two things at once. It removes any long-shot chance that this site could have eventually eased Albany's housing crunch, and it adds a shoreline park that will make homes near it more desirable to live close to once it opens. That's a formula for tighter competition on the west side of Albany, not looser competition, even though nothing about the number of homes on the market changes.

The Fiscal Trade Albany Is Actually Making

Converting a taxable commercial property into public parkland has a cost, and Albany has already done the math. City estimates put the annual loss at roughly $800,000 in use-fee revenue alone, on top of hundreds of thousands more in sales and property tax. Before the track closed, it was one of Albany's top commercial taxpayers, alongside Toyota and Target, and in fiscal year 2023-24 it generated about $400,000 in non-property tax general fund revenue, close to 1.3 percent of the city's total. Specific city services tied to that money include the Measure K emergency medical services parcel tax and the street and storm drain parcel tax, both of which drew a meaningful share of their funding from track-related revenue.

None of this changes the zoning outcome. It does mean Albany will need to find replacement revenue somewhere, which is useful context if you're weighing how a small city with a fixed footprint manages its budget over the next several years.

What Happens Between Now and the Park Actually Opening

This isn't a project with a single closing date and a ribbon-cutting the next week. The timeline stretches out:

1. Through September 2026: Governor Newsom has until the end of the month to sign SB 113, which would lock in a $125 million state contribution toward the $175 million purchase price, on top of the $20 million the East Bay Regional Park District already committed from the 2008 voter-approved Measure WW.
2. Early 2027: Trust for Public Land's deadline to finish assembling the full $175 million and complete the purchase.
3. Spring 2027: Expected transfer of ownership to the East Bay Regional Park District.
4. 2027 through 2029: A public planning process with the cities of Albany and Berkeley to shape what the park actually includes.
5. Beyond 2029: Phased construction as funding becomes available, including removal of the grandstand, a 175,000-square-foot structure, along with the stables and worker housing.

If you're timing a purchase around this amenity, understand that the payoff is not immediate. The site will connect to Albany Beach, the Albany Bulb, McLaughlin Eastshore State Park, and eventually Point Isabel Regional Shoreline and Brooks Island Regional Preserve, closing one of the last gaps in a shoreline park system that already runs from Richmond to Oakland. That's a real, lasting addition to daily life on this stretch of the bay. It's also several years out.

What This Means If You're Comparing Albany to Its Neighbors

Buyers weighing Albany against El Cerrito, north Berkeley, or Richmond often start with the school district and the walk to Solano Avenue. Add this to the list: Albany's last plausible source of new housing supply is being converted to a park with no reversal in sight, thanks to a rule voters put in place decades before most current buyers were house hunting. That's not a reason to avoid Albany. It's a reason to expect the competitive dynamics that already define the market, quick sales, multiple offers, tight inventory, to hold or intensify rather than ease, even as the neighborhood gains a genuinely valuable new shoreline amenity next door.

A Few Questions Worth Asking Early

Will homes near the water get more expensive right away? The park won't open for years, so any price effect is more likely to show up gradually as the planning process firms up what the site will actually include, not as an immediate jump.

Does this affect Berkeley's housing market too? About 40 acres of the site sit in Berkeley, so the same zoning logic and the same park benefit apply there, though the bulk of the fiscal impact and the zoning history is specific to Albany.

Is there any chance this reverts to a housing conversation? Given the 1990 voter-approval requirement, the funding already committed by the state and the park district, and the demolition of existing structures already underway, a shift back toward housing at this stage would require the kind of citywide vote that hasn't found support in over three decades.

If you're trying to figure out what a home near this stretch of Albany is actually worth, given a park that's coming but not here yet, and a market that different data sources are reading in different directions, that's exactly the kind of question worth a local conversation rather than a national estimate. Michael Lane Group works this market block by block, including the west side of Albany closest to the water, and can walk you through what a free home valuation looks like once you factor in what's actually changing, and what isn't, around you. Get a free home valuation or start your East Bay search today.