For a long time, a Union City Saturday meant one of two things. You either headed to Old Alvarado for the farmers market and stayed close to the historic core, or you pointed the car at Union Landing and treated the day as errands with a movie attached. Those were the choices.
That map is out of date. The Station District around the BART station has quietly built enough new housing, plaza space, and planned transit to function as a second downtown, and the older Alvarado side has held onto exactly the things the new side does not yet have. The interesting move this summer is to stop picking one and route a Saturday through both.
The Alvarado side still owns the morning
Start at Old Alvarado Park, also known as Cesar Chavez Park at Smith and Watkins. The Union City Farmers' Market runs Saturdays 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., year-round, operated by the Pacific Coast Farmers' Market Association. It is small on purpose. If you have shopped the New Park Mall market in Newark or the Hayward market on B Street, you already know the Union City version is a different animal: fewer stalls, more shade, and a gazebo and playground close enough that one adult can shop while another sits with kids.
A few anchors on this side of town that a resident already knows but out-of-town blogs miss:
- The Bay Area Flight 93 Memorial sits in Sugar Mill Landing Park and was the first monument completed in the United States to honor the passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 93. It is a five-minute detour from the market, and the corner it occupies at Alvarado-Niles and Dyer is walkable from Union Landing across the light.
- The California Beet Sugar Company, the first sugar beet factory in the United States, was located here and is marked by California Historical Landmark #768 at Dyer and Ratekin. Nothing about that plaque changes summer to summer, but it explains why the street grid on this side of town bends the way it does.
- The Union City Historical Museum handles the rest of the context, from Ohlone shell mounds along Alameda Creek to Alvarado's brief run as Alameda County's first county seat before the designation moved to San Leandro in 1865.
None of this is new. That is the point. The Alvarado side is the part of Union City that rewards residents who already know the streets and can string a morning together without a phone.
The Station District is the part that keeps changing
Walk or drive the two miles from Old Alvarado over to the BART station and the tone shifts. The Station District is a 471-acre area surrounding the Union City Intermodal Station, envisioned in the General Plan as a transit-oriented community with new retail, public amenities, and high-density housing linked by bicycle and pedestrian facilities. On paper that sounds like every specific plan filed in California in the last decade. On the ground, enough of it has actually been built that a Saturday afternoon walk here now works.
Union Flats brought 243 LEED Platinum homes, including modular apartments and live-work lofts, and activates a landscaped promenade north of Station Center Family Housing, facing the new Union Center Plaza and the current Union City BART station. Next door, Station Center brought 157 affordable family homes on a previously disused transit-oriented lot, with a four-story entry portal and double-height retail space facing 11th Street. What the two buildings together produced, almost as a side effect, is a walkable block with a plaza in the middle of it. That did not exist five years ago.
The city's numbers on the district are worth pausing on. Union City reports that the Station District has transformed more than 90 acres of vacant, underutilized, and environmentally contaminated land into a pedestrian and transit-oriented community, with 1,700 new housing units built or entitled and 1.2 million square feet of planned office space next to BART. Set that against the older estimate residents carry around, which is that Union City is a bedroom community for Fremont and Hayward with a BART stop bolted on, and the picture is different. It has become a place where the housing near the station is denser than most of the surrounding single-family fabric by design.
The next five years are the interesting ones. Union City projects that within roughly a half mile of the BART station, another 2,000 homes will be built at an average density of 45 units per acre.
That is the density figure to hold in your head when you visit. It is what tells you the plaza scene you see on a Saturday in July 2026 is not the finished product.
Where the roads are actually going
The other thing shifting the weekend map is Quarry Lakes Parkway. The roadway is a 3-mile project that connects Mission Boulevard and Paseo Padre Parkway, and the city's transportation memo argues it will change how residents move through the Station District. The parkway is expected to relieve traffic along Decoto Road, provide a multiuse path with connections to regional trails, and accommodate land use growth by improving circulation within the Station District and providing grade separations. In plain terms: the two rail crossings that currently strangle trips between the BART side and the rest of town get bypassed.
Pair that with the rail piece. The Southern Alameda County Integrated Rail Analysis identified the Union City BART station as the best location for an ACE-BART rail-to-rail hub, and the new SoCo Rail Layover Facility is intended to make it easier to use ACE, BART, and connect to travel markets around the Bay Area. None of this is finished. All of it is why the Station District will not stop changing in the near term.
A Saturday that uses both ends
Here is how the two sides fit into one day without doubling back:
- 9:00 to 10:30 a.m. Old Alvarado Park farmers market at Smith and Watkins. Bring a bag. The seafood vendor tends to leave earlier than the rest of the market.
- 10:45 a.m. Walk or short drive to Sugar Mill Landing Park at Alvarado-Niles and Dyer for the Flight 93 Memorial. Ten minutes is enough.
- 11:15 a.m. If you have not already been, the Union City Historical Museum sits nearby and answers most of the "why is this named that" questions the morning has generated.
- Noon. Lunch on the Alvarado side, or point the car toward the Station District and eat near the plaza. This is the seam in the day where you switch halves of town.
- 1:30 p.m. Walk the promenade between Union Flats and Station Center. It is the newest piece of public space in Union City and reads best in raking afternoon light.
- 3:00 p.m. Quarry Lakes Regional Recreation Area for the second half. The park is a good walk or bike ride, with bald eagles and peregrine falcons often visible, summer swimming, and a rare fruit tree orchard, plus Alameda Creek extending the ride. It is technically shared with Fremont and Newark, but the access from the Union City side is the easy one.
- Golden hour back home, or dinner along the Union Landing corridor if you did not eat earlier.
The loop works because the two halves of Union City are complements, not substitutes. The Alvarado core gives you the things that only exist because the town is 175 years old. The Station District gives you the things that only exist because it is being rebuilt right now.
What to put on the calendar between now and Labor Day
A short list of things that are actually happening, not aspirational:
- Old Alvarado Park farmers market, every Saturday, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., year-round.
- The city's community events page carries the current summer roster; the July 2026 calendar already shows Park and Recreation Commission meetings and CERT training among the near-term city-run events.
- Quarry Lakes swimming season while lifeguards are on duty. Parking is paid at the entrance.
- A walk through the Station District plaza on a weekend afternoon before the next phase of construction changes the sightlines. The plaza reads differently at 5 p.m. than it does at noon.
Why this matters if you have lived here a while
If you have owned in Union City for ten or fifteen years, the temptation is to assume you know the town. Most of what has actually changed is on the BART side, and most of what has stayed the same is on the Alvarado side, and the residents who get the most out of a summer here are the ones who let both be true at the same time. The market on Watkins Street is still the market on Watkins Street. The 90 acres north of it are not the 90 acres they were a decade ago.
Understanding how a neighborhood is changing block by block is the same skill that decides when to remodel, when to list, and when to sit tight. If you are weighing any of that this year and want a read on where your specific street sits in the larger Union City picture, Sanjay Mitra works this market with a contractor's eye for what actually adds value and a boutique advisor's discretion about how to move. Schedule a Consultation when you are ready to talk.
