If you've lived here more than a couple of years, you've watched San Pablo Avenue absorb small changes without ever really rearranging itself. That's not the story of 2026. This year, the two BART stations at either end of town are quietly pulling El Cerrito's center of gravity toward them, and the food, the trail, and the buildings are all following.
The signals aren't loud yet. A dumpling shop across from the Plaza gets a national award. A parking lot fills with construction fencing. The Greenway closes for three weeks in July. Take any one of these on its own and it's a headline. Line them up and they read like a plan.
The Plaza and Del Norte stations are becoming the town, and the boulevard between them is becoming the connector rather than the destination.
The food map is redrawing itself around the stations
Start with the piece that already showed up in a national guide. New Dumpling, the open-kitchen spot a short walk from the Plaza BART station, was named to the 2026 MICHELIN Guide USA as a Bib Gourmand pick, singled out as a cheery spot where dumplings are the star of the show. The inspector's write-up mentions a peanut salad with celery and crinkle-cut carrot, and dumplings with fillings that range from traditional to sweet corn and chicken or scrambled egg and tomato. If you've been going for years, none of that surprises you. What's new is the address suddenly reads differently on a map: a Bib Gourmand within two blocks of a BART turnstile.
At the other end of town, the pattern repeats with more square footage. The Mayfair Station building near Del Norte BART is a five-story project with 69 below-market rate units and four ground-floor commercial spaces, three of which have already been leased to a convenience market called Mayfair Market and a public food hall restaurant. A grocery and a food hall aren't glamorous on their own. They matter because they finish a walk that used to end at a parking lot. Del Norte has been a place you drive to for a train. In eighteen months it's going to be a place you walk to for dinner.
What's actually rising in the Plaza parking lot
The bigger change is happening at Plaza BART, and the numbers are worth sitting with. On March 5, leaders from BART, the State of California, the City of El Cerrito, and Related California celebrated the groundbreaking of 70 affordable apartments at the El Cerrito Plaza BART Station, marking the start of the first phase of a Transit-Oriented Development. That's the ceremony you may have seen photos of. The actual foundation work started earlier, in November 2025, on the Parcel A South building at 515 Richmond Street, designed by PYATOK.
Here's what the six-phase plan adds up to, based on filings from BART, the City, and the California Strategic Growth Council:
| Piece of the plan | What it delivers |
|---|---|
| Total homes | 743 new apartments across six buildings |
| First building | Six-story U-shaped building with 1–3 bedroom homes for households earning 30–60% of Contra Costa AMI |
| Public plaza | A plaza running from Liberty Street along Fairmount Avenue to the BART station |
| Library | Up to 20,000 square feet reserved for a potential public library |
| Commercial space | Up to 2,100 square feet at ground level |
| Parking | 145 spaces for BART riders in a new garage |
| First building complete | Anticipated Q1 2027 |
| Full buildout | All six buildings anticipated for completion in 2029 |
Read the affordability mix carefully, because it's unusual for a project this size. Related is advancing three affordable phases totaling 233 units at up to 60% AMI, Holliday Development is delivering two market-rate phases totaling 392 units, and a joint venture between the two will build one phase of 118 units of missing-middle housing. That last phase is the one to watch. Missing-middle is the segment El Cerrito has been shortest on for a decade, and it's the segment that most affects what an owner's block looks like five years from now.
If you're trying to picture the finished thing, the render from PYATOK shows the corner of Richmond Street, Central Avenue, and the Ohlone Greenway wrapped in horizontal board siding, concrete, and stucco. It's across from the BART Station and two blocks from the grocery-store-anchored El Cerrito Plaza shopping center. Two blocks. That's the whole point.
The Greenway's summer detour, and why it's a good sign
If you walk the Ohlone Greenway on weekday mornings, you already noticed the sawhorses. Planning for an Ohlone Greenway Safety Improvements Project was initiated in 2023, and the project includes a planned closure of the section between Cedar Street and Virginia Gardens from July 6 to July 31, 2026. Three weeks is inconvenient. Three weeks is also short by public-works standards, and it's the visible edge of a longer effort to add wayfinding and amenities along the full 2.7-mile El Cerrito stretch of the trail.
The Greenway itself has become something more than an alternative to the sidewalk. For over 20 years, as of 2026, the section between Gilman and Peralta Street has been stewarded by community gardeners committed to California native plants and their pollinators, and community volunteers tend three additional gardens between Santa Fe Avenue and Hopkins Street. That's not a city amenity in the ordinary sense. That's a two-decade volunteer project that most of the people using the trail don't know exists.
If you want the guided version, mark November. On Sunday, November 15, at 10:00 AM, the El Cerrito Historical Society is running a free two-mile walk from the Ohlone Greenway at Fairmount Avenue, across from El Cerrito Plaza BART, ending at Del Norte BART, led by Steve Price and Steve Batchelder. It's the whole thesis of this post compressed into an hour: you'll walk from one station-in-transition to the other, through the corridor that connects them.
The fall calendar residents actually mark
A few things worth putting on the fridge before the light shifts:
- The twelfth annual Hillside Festival. A celebration with guided walks to find edible and medicinal plants, talks from local geologists about the land, rock hunts, and live music with a view, organized by EC Trail Trekkers. Details at ectrailtrekkers.org.
- Rialto Cerrito's 20th anniversary. The Rialto opened its doors in 1937, was almost lost for good decades later, and the Historical Society is marking the twentieth anniversary of its resurrection. Date still to be posted.
- Greening the Greenway walk. November 15, 10:00 AM at Fairmount Avenue. Free.
- Best of El Cerrito 2026. The Chamber's annual voting is running now at elcerritochamber.org, if you want your regular breakfast place to place well.
Reading the map
Here's the piece you don't get from any single article. For most of the last two decades, El Cerrito's civic map read as a long strip: San Pablo Avenue with a Plaza at one end, a Del Norte at the other, and everything else oriented sideways to the boulevard. Owners who bought here bought a street.
By 2029 the map is going to read as two nodes with a corridor between them. New Dumpling's Michelin nod tells you the food is already treating the Plaza station as a walk-up destination. Mayfair Station is telling you Del Norte will do the same on a bigger footprint. The 743 units at Plaza BART are telling you where the daily population is going to sit down every evening. And the Greenway, once its wayfinding and safety work is finished, is what stitches those two centers together without a car.
If you own a home here already, the practical implication is small and worth naming. Blocks within walking distance of either station are going to feel materially different in three years than they do today. Not more crowded in the way an owner worries about, but more finished. The parking lot that has always been the answer to "where's downtown" is going to stop being the answer.
If you'd like a straight read on what any of this means for the value of your specific block, or you're just curious what your home would price at against this backdrop, the BloomHomes Team tracks El Cerrito closings block by block. You can start with our instant home valuation, browse the El Cerrito neighborhood page, or get in touch when you're ready for a conversation rather than a number.
