Silicon Valley Business Journal
From the article:
It's all systems go for Lennar in Fremont after the city council approved plans for a massive project next to the under-construction Warm Springs BART station.
In a 4-1 vote on Tuesday, Fremont gave the developer the green light to move forward with more than 2,200 housing units and 1.4 million square feet of commercial space on the 111-acre site just north of the Tesla Motors Inc. plant. The project will be among the largest master-planned developments in Silicon Valley and is the biggest thing going near any of the new BART stations as the system expands into Santa Clara County.
Officials called the development transformational and the lynchpin of a plan to turn the area into a mixed-use "innovation district," an 879-acre area designed to house a mix of businesses, homes and services.
The outcome is a remarkable change of destiny for what could have been a rail yard. Union Pacific snapped up the land after the shuttering of the old NUMMI plant a couple of years ago. City officials, however, eyed the site for development into a mixed-use jobs and housing hub, and developed a new land-use plan that promoted research and development, manufacturing, shops and housing in an urban context. Union Pacific ended up putting the site up for sale in 2013, and Lennar went into contract. (The Miami-based homebuilder has still not closed on the land.)