Ask a Castro Valley resident where they took out-of-town family last August, and the answer was probably Lake Chabot in the morning and the Marketplace for dinner. Ask the same question this August and a third stop has quietly inserted itself into the itinerary: the block of Castro Valley Boulevard that used to be a shuttered Rite Aid. The summer map of downtown is redrawing itself in real time, and if you already live here, it's worth knowing what has actually changed before the next relative flies in.
The Rite Aid block is now the busiest food address in town
The old Rite Aid at 3868 Castro Valley Boulevard closed in August 2023 and sat empty long enough that residents were speculating about a replacement business ranging from a Sprouts grocery store to a car wash to a furniture and appliance store. What arrived instead, after an August 2024 Alameda County Public Works approval with an endorsement from the Castro Valley Municipal Advisory Council, is a scale of operation this stretch of the Boulevard has never hosted.
HL Peninsula Restaurant opened in late October 2025 inside a 28,000-square-foot banquet hall offering an extensive menu of Cantonese-style dishes. The room itself is the story. Seating is available for more than 800 guests in the main room, and there are also nine private VIP rooms, equipped to accommodate up to fifty people depending on the room, bringing the total to 1,250. For scale, Kowloon Restaurant in Saugus, Massachusetts, claims it can seat up to 1,200 people, meaning HL Peninsula is now credibly in the conversation for the largest Cantonese restaurant in the country, and it lives on the same block as Trader Joe's.
Weekday dim sum runs 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and weekend service starts at 10 a.m. Dinner is 5 to 9:30 p.m. daily, so a late Sunday afternoon walk-in is still your best shot before the banquet crowd arrives.
Directly next door is Mei Mei Market, the Asian grocery paired with the restaurant in the same development. Together they turn what was a dead retail parcel into a two-hour Saturday errand, and they do it without pulling foot traffic away from the older core two blocks west.
That older core is the Castro Valley Marketplace at 3295 Castro Valley Boulevard, the food hall inside the former Daughtrey's building. It is worth relearning if you have not been in a while. The anchor tenants now include Akemi Sushi, Amphora Nueva, Baron's Meats & Seafood, and Seven Hills Baking Co. on the first floor, with Pizza The Bay upstairs and The Cannery Kitchen & Tap for a sit-down meal. The newest addition is Beard Papa, a cream puff bakery at the Castro Valley Boulevard entrance, run by a Castro Valley resident named Ye Ye. The building's small wine bar in the basement is the underrated move: you can get a flight of wine for less than half of what you would pay in Napa Valley, and it is a five-minute walk from BART.
A weekend that never leaves downtown
Here is what a fully-in-downtown Saturday looks like this summer, using only what has opened or been reprogrammed in the last twenty-four months.
| Time | Stop | Why now |
|---|---|---|
| 8:30 a.m. | Castro Valley Farmers' Market at the BART lot | Corner of Redwood Rd. and Norbridge Ave., in the BART Station Parking Lot — walkable from most of the flats |
| 10:30 a.m. | Beard Papa + coffee at the Marketplace | New in 2025; hometown owner |
| 12:00 p.m. | Dim sum at HL Peninsula | Weekend lunch opens at 10 a.m. and turns over by 2:15 p.m. |
| 3:00 p.m. | West Shore Trail loop at Lake Chabot | The paved 3.52-mile West Shore and East Shore trails provide access to the south and east shores of the lake |
| 6:30 p.m. | Wine flight in the Marketplace basement, then Pizza The Bay | Under-scheduled compared to Friday nights |
That itinerary was not possible in the summer of 2023. The Rite Aid was still boarded up, Beard Papa was not open, and Mei Mei Market did not exist. The point is not that Castro Valley has more to do than before; it is that the density has shifted. You no longer need to drive to San Leandro or Hayward to string together a full day of eating and errands.
June and July are unusually front-loaded this year
Two dated events are worth putting on the calendar now if you have not already.
The Castro Valley Car Show returns on June 20, 2026. The event will run from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM on Castro Valley Blvd. Spectators attend free, and the show closes down part of the Boulevard for classic and custom cars, live music, and food vendors. If you live in the flats between Redwood and Grove Way, plan your morning grocery run before 10 a.m. or you will be doing the long way around.
Three weeks later, the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo lands at Rowell Ranch. Performances run Friday, July 10, 2026 from 4:00 PM onwards, and Saturday, July 11, 2026 from 2:30 PM onwards at Rowell Ranch Rodeo, Castro Valley. This one is worth flagging even if you have never gone to a rodeo before. The Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo celebrates and honors Black Cowboys and Cowgirls and their contributions to building the West, and serves as a cultural event and opportunity for families to enjoy and embrace the cowboy culture, while being educated and entertained with reenactments, history highlights, and western adventure.
For an indoor evening, the Castro Valley Center for the Arts on Redwood Road is running Disney's Newsies at 7:30 pm on June 14, 2026, and the Center's calendar carries through to Splendor of Sitar with Purbayan Chatterjee on Saturday, August 22, 2026 at 5:00 PM. Season subscriptions for the Center are the sort of small local commitment that quietly pays off across a year.
Lake Chabot rewards the resident who reads the fine print
Everyone knows the lake. The value is in the details that separate a good visit from a wasted one.
First, the trail closure to plan around. The Goldenrod Trail at Anthony Chabot Regional Park between Jackson Grade at the south and its intersection with Jalquin Trail at the north will be closed for fuels reduction work 24 hours a day and 7 days a week from May 18 to November 20, 2026. If Goldenrod was part of your regular loop, you are rerouting for the whole season. The West Shore and East Shore trails are unaffected, and the Lake Chabot bicycle loop covers 12.42 miles via the Live Oak Trail and 14.41 miles via the Honker Bay Trail, so bike days are still on.
Second, the fish are seasonal. Trout gets planted heavily in cooler months, but the best trout bite can be found from the fall through spring months, with catfish during the summer months. Honker Bay and around the Island are great spots to try for catfish during the summer months. If you have been dragging kids to the lake in July hoping for trout, that is why nothing is biting.
Third, the boat tour is short-season and reservation-driven. The Chabot Queen runs guided lake tours departing Saturdays and Sundays at 11:00am, 12:30pm, 2:20pm and 3:50pm from April through October, with lake tour rates of $10 per hour per adult and $6 per hour per rider aged 12 and under. Online tickets close the Thursday before each tour date, so a Saturday morning decision to go usually will not work.
Fourth, the practical stuff. Parking is $5, daily fishing access is $5, and gate hours from May through Labor Day run 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. That late gate is the season's small gift. A 7:30 p.m. picnic on the East Shore in July is one of the better free things a Castro Valley resident has access to, and most people leave by 6.
One quiet change worth watching
The reason the Boulevard block matters more than any single restaurant opening is that Castro Valley has historically dispersed its eating outward: to Hayward, to San Leandro, to Dublin. HL Peninsula, Mei Mei Market, and the ongoing Marketplace additions run against that pattern. They are pulling weekend traffic into a walkable eight-block spine between the BART station and Lake Chabot Road for the first time in a decade. If you live in the flats, that means shorter drives on Saturday. If you live in the hills, it means more reason to come down.
None of this shows up in a portal listing or a neighborhood scorecard. It shows up in whether your Sunday morning has three good options within a mile of your front door, or one. This summer, for the first time in a while, it is three.
If you want to talk through what any of this means for your block specifically, or you are curious how the Boulevard's new density is showing up in day-to-day life around your street, Abelino Espinoza-Sanchez is happy to trade notes over coffee. Start Your Path to Homeownership when the time is right, but until then, enjoy the summer you already live in.
