Drive Wolfe Road past Stevens Creek Boulevard this month and you will hit two different kinds of orange cones within a quarter mile of each other. One set marks pile driving and lane shifts at the I-280 interchange. The other marks grading and utility work on the old Vallco mall footprint, where cranes are starting to show up behind the chain-link. Most residents assume it is one project. It is not. It is two, run by two different organizations, on two different clocks, and the fact that they are both hitting their construction phase in 2026 is not a coincidence so much as a decade finally catching up with itself.
Here is what is actually happening, and why the timing lines up the way it does.
The interchange rebuild is a public transportation project, not a developer project
The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority broke ground on the Wolfe Road overpass rebuild on April 28, 2026. Contractor O.C. Jones & Sons started with tree removal and temporary lane shifts that same month, then moved into pile driving for new bridge foundations. The scope is significant: crews will demolish the north side of the Wolfe Road bridge over I-280 and rebuild it with three lanes in each direction, plus additional lanes on the on and off ramps, plus protected bike lanes and wider sidewalks that do not exist today.
The price tag is $115 to $124 million, and the funding source is worth knowing if you assume the mall redevelopment is paying for it. It is not. The money comes primarily from VTA's 2016 Measure B sales tax, with a $4 million contribution from Apple to the city of Cupertino. This is public infrastructure spending tied to a voter-approved transportation measure, running on its own schedule regardless of what happens on the old Vallco parcel next door.
The timeline is long. Major construction runs through spring 2029, followed by a plant establishment period that extends into 2030 for the landscaping to take hold. If you live or commute anywhere near this interchange, plan for years, not months, of intermittent lane shifts, temporary detours, and rolling work zones.
The old mall site is finally moving too
Earlier this year, the City of Cupertino approved another modification to The Rise, the redevelopment replacing what used to be Vallco Shopping Mall. The overall unit count has held steady at 2,669 homes across the life of the project, but the mix keeps shifting as the developer, Sand Hill Property Company, adjusts for construction costs and financing conditions.
The first phase, called Town Square West, is the one to watch if you want a sense of what arrives first. It calls for 1,369 housing units, split between 232 affordable family rental homes, 744 market-rate rentals, and 393 for-sale homes. Retail comes in at roughly 202,000 square feet, which is close to 90 percent of the project's entire retail footprint, meaning nearly all the shops and restaurants planned for the site are concentrated in this first stage rather than spread thin across later phases. Three-plus acres of public parkland are planned across five connected spaces, with plazas, playfields, and trails linking them.
One number worth sitting with: the affordable housing component across the whole project dropped from 890 units to 356 in the most recent revision. Sand Hill has attributed the cut to rising construction costs and interest rates making the original numbers financially unworkable. Whatever the reasoning, it is a real change from what was on the table even a year ago, and it is the kind of adjustment large Bay Area developments have been making across the board as costs climb faster than rents.
Vertical construction on Town Square West is targeted to begin by the end of 2026, with first occupancy possible in 2028 if the schedule holds.
The two projects share an origin story, even if they run on separate budgets
The reason both are surfacing in the same construction season traces back further than either groundbreaking. City planning documents on the Vallco redevelopment going back to 2021 flagged this exact stretch of road as a problem the project would eventually have to solve. A detailed status report from that period states plainly that the completed development would generate significant vehicular traffic, and it documents the city's Transportation Manager requesting repeated analysis of a proposed new signal near Wolfe Road specifically because of concerns about traffic and emergency response times once the mall site filled back in with people.
In other words, this intersection has been treated as a known pressure point tied to Vallco's redevelopment for close to five years before anyone showed up with equipment. The interchange rebuild and the Town Square West groundbreaking are separate undertakings with separate funding, but they exist because the same underlying question, what happens to Wolfe Road once thousands of new residents and shoppers arrive, has been sitting on the city's desk since the project was first approved under state housing law.
That history also explains some of the friction you may have caught in local coverage. When Sand Hill submitted its most recent round of revisions the day before Thanksgiving in 2025, Cupertino's mayor, Liang Chao, publicly noted the timing gave the city a shorter runway for careful review during the holidays. The developer's response framed the timing as necessary to keep tax credit deadlines on track for the first affordable building. Both things can be true. Large projects moving under state streamlining rules do not leave much room for slow deliberation, and residents are the ones watching the schedule play out in real time on both sides of the intersection.
What changes, and when
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| Early 2026 | City approves latest modification to The Rise |
| April 2026 | VTA and O.C. Jones & Sons begin tree removal and pile driving at Wolfe Road/I-280 |
| April 28, 2026 | Official groundbreaking for the interchange rebuild |
| Late 2026 | Vertical construction targeted to begin on Town Square West |
| 2028 | First possible occupancy for Town Square West homes and retail |
| Spring 2029 | Major interchange construction wraps |
| 2030 | Plant establishment period ends for interchange landscaping |
If you drive this corridor daily, the practical takeaway is that disruption stacks in the near term and eases unevenly. Night work, vibration monitoring, and temporary barriers are already part of the routine near the interchange, and that will continue for roughly three more construction seasons before the bridge work wraps. Meanwhile the mall site will spend the next year or two looking like a construction yard before the first buildings, retail spaces, and parkland pieces of Town Square West start to take shape.
What the corner could look like by 2028
If both schedules hold, the version of this intersection you will see in two years looks different from either the dead mall or the current dig site. A wider bridge with protected bike lanes and sidewalks that do not force pedestrians into the road. A cluster of new apartments, rental homes, and for-sale units where Sears and JCPenney used to anchor a shopping center that lost its last department stores back in 2015. Retail and restaurants filling in along Stevens Creek Boulevard instead of sitting behind boarded storefronts. Parkland connecting five separate green spaces instead of a sea of parking lot.
None of that changes what the next year or two feels like from behind the wheel. But knowing that the disruption has an end date, and that the two projects causing it were never really separate stories, makes the cones a little easier to drive past.
If you are watching how this stretch of Cupertino keeps shifting and want a local perspective on what it means for your own street or your own home, Rob Godar & Associates has been tracking Silicon Valley neighborhoods like this one for years. Reach out for a Get a Free Home Valuation conversation whenever you are ready to talk about what a changing corridor like this means for you.
