On November 26, 2025, the day before Thanksgiving, Sand Hill Property Company delivered a revised construction plan to Cupertino's city manager. The timing was not an accident. Mayor Liang Chao told the council that the developer had deliberately chosen the slowest week of the municipal calendar, when a 60 day review clock would tick through the holidays with less scrutiny than any other stretch of the year. Reed Moulds, the company's managing director, called it a gesture of partnership, framed no differently than extensions the city had given the developer in the past.
Both statements can be true, and that is the point. Cupertino had 60 days to respond to a plan that cut affordable housing at the former Vallco Mall site from 890 units to 356, a reduction of roughly 60 percent, while total housing at the 50 acre property held steady at 2,669 units. The city could review it. It could not veto it. That asymmetry, not the mall's decline or the mix of buildings, is the fact that should shape how anyone buys or sells near Wolfe Road for the next several years.
The Law That Removed the City's Leverage
The Rise moves forward under California's Senate Bill 35, a state law written to streamline housing approvals in cities that fall short of state production targets. Cupertino has fallen short for years, and SB 35 gives a qualifying project a form of entitlement that ordinary discretionary review does not. Once a project like The Rise clears its initial SB 35 approval, later modifications get evaluated against objective standards rather than a full public hearing where the council can simply say no.
That is why the city's own planning update on the Nov 26 filing pointed at an approval, not a rejection. The developer's justification was financial feasibility. Construction costs had risen, capital markets for large multifamily projects had tightened, and the original mix of 2,669 units, nearly 2 million square feet of office space, and a large affordable component no longer worked as a business plan. Under a normal zoning process, the city could have pushed back hard on the trade. Under SB 35, its options were narrower.
What Actually Changed, and What Didn't
The clearest way to see the pattern is to look at what the developer was willing to cut against what it protected.
| Component | 2024 modification | Modification approved February 27, 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Total housing units | 2,669 | 2,669 |
| Affordable units | 890 | 356 |
| Office space | About 1.95 million sq ft | Roughly 500,000 sq ft removed, eliminating two office buildings entirely |
The total unit count never moved. That number is what determines the project's density bonus math and its standing with the state, so it stayed fixed while everything harder to defend in a negotiation, affordable units, office square footage, absorbed the cuts instead. For a buyer trying to read the project as a signal about future supply, the lesson is not that The Rise is shrinking. It is that the number the city and state care most about is the number least likely to change again, while everything else remains negotiable.
The Only Phase With Real Numbers Attached Right Now
Crews have been on site since late 2025 handling horizontal work, grading the southwestern half of the Wolfe Road frontage and installing utilities ahead of any towers going up. The first phase slated for vertical construction is called Town Square West, and its numbers are worth knowing precisely because this is the supply that will actually reach the market, not the aspirational 2,669 figure attached to the full buildout.
Town Square West is planned for 1,369 housing units: 232 affordable family rental homes, 744 market rate rentals, and 393 for sale homes. It also includes about 202,000 square feet of retail, nearly 90 percent of the project's total retail footprint, and more than three acres of public parkland connecting five separate open spaces. As of the city's February 2026 approval, the developer's target has vertical construction beginning before the end of 2026, with the first homes and amenities ready as soon as 2028.
That 393 for sale figure matters more than the headline total for anyone comparing a resale condo or townhouse near Vallco today against what will exist in that same submarket in two years. It is new construction, priced by a single developer with modern floor plans, arriving in a ZIP code where resale inventory has been thin for years.
What This Means If You're Weighing a Purchase Near Wolfe Road
If you're looking at an existing condo or townhouse near the Vallco site right now, you're buying into a market that has not yet felt direct competition from new inventory. The site is still mostly grading and utility work. That changes once Town Square West's for sale units list, targeted for as soon as 2028, on a timeline this project has already revised more than once since its original 2018 approval.
A five to seven year hold horizon is the right frame here, not a two year flip. If your window overlaps with 2028, you should assume your unit will eventually be comped against newer product a few blocks away, and price your expectations for appreciation accordingly rather than assuming today's scarcity persists unchanged.
If you're selling an existing property in the same corridor before then, you have a real but temporary advantage. There is no new for sale competition on the ground yet. That window narrows as vertical construction visibly progresses, since buyer psychology often shifts the moment cranes are visible, well before the first units actually close.
If you're watching the project as a reason to buy into Cupertino generally, treat the affordable and office cuts as evidence of how this specific deal works, not as proof the whole thing will collapse. The total unit count has survived three modification rounds since 2018 without changing. What flexes is the mix.
A Pattern Bigger Than One Project
The Rise is not the only Cupertino housing project facing this kind of pressure. An April 2026 newsletter from Cupertino Matters notes that other developments working toward the city's state mandated housing targets, including a project on Evulich Court, have faced objections of their own even where the Vallco style conflict never entered the picture. The same newsletter tracked a 51 unit townhome project from SummerHill Homes on Linda Vista Drive moving through its own hearing process, a reminder that Cupertino has several state mandated housing sites working in parallel, each on its own timeline. A separate piece of pending litigation involving Cupertino, unrelated to Vallco itself, was still working through Santa Clara County Superior Court as of late March 2026, with a judge denying the petitioners' request for a temporary restraining order.
None of this has stopped Cupertino's broader housing pipeline. It has simply meant every project moves at its own pace, shaped by its own financing and legal pressure, while the city's ability to intervene stays limited whenever state streamlining law applies. A community group called Better Cupertino has publicly opposed successive versions of The Rise since 2022, and that opposition has not changed the entitlement path either. If you're evaluating any new construction near a major Cupertino site, the presence of a lawsuit or an advocacy group tells you the project is contested. It does not tell you the timeline will change.
A Few Questions Worth Asking Before You Act
Could the affordable count shrink again before 2028? Nothing in the SB 35 framework prevents another modification request if construction costs keep rising. The total unit count has held through three rounds of changes. The mix around it has not.
Does the pending litigation put the 2026 construction start at risk? The one case reviewed here was denied a temporary restraining order as of late March 2026, and it does not appear to target The Rise directly. Treat any new filing against the project itself as the detail worth tracking, not the existence of litigation in general, which has followed this site for most of a decade.
What's the safest way to price a resale near Wolfe Road while this is still under construction? Anchor to comparable sales in the immediate corridor rather than citywide Cupertino medians, and factor in a horizon long enough to include 2028, since that is when new for sale inventory is scheduled to test the market you're buying into.
Silicon Valley real estate rewards buyers and sellers who read the mechanism behind a project, not just its brochure. If you're weighing a purchase or sale near Wolfe Road, or anywhere else across Cupertino, Saratoga, Los Gatos, or the surrounding Peninsula, Vijay Chaudhary can walk through what a specific property's timing and comps actually look like. Let's Connect.
