Stretching across nearly 5,000 acres of formerly flood-prone land now protected by an impressive network of super levees, the new master planned community River Islands will ultimately be home to nearly 30,000 residents in Lathrop, California. Unlike the previous generation of master planned communities, River Islands is already connected to its neighboring metropolitan areas—San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Sacramento—via a nearby ACE (Altamont Commuter Express) Train station, and the Valley Link rail project, a new planned extension of BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), will soon stop at River Islands’ front door, creating a truly connected, transit-accessible community.
River Islands Town Center will bring a truly unique sports, recreation, and entertainment destination to the Central Valley unlike any other, with an unprecedented combination of uses. Destination retail and restaurants surround a central swim lagoon and beach and club. A top-tier 600-seat baseball stadium and 4,000-seat dual-use soccer and football stadium will serve as the home fields for the River Islands High School’s varsity sports teams, in addition to hosting tournaments for the State’s most elite sports leagues. A 130-room hotel will host banquets, weddings, and business travelers, and a mix of other retail and office uses will complete the commercial core. Together with over 600 new multifamily housing units, this new downtown will attract visitors and River Islands residents alike to a new, thriving suburban center.
The Town Center already features an extensive complex of regulation fields that hosts destination soccer tournaments, and Islanders Field has already become a regular stop on the college and professional baseball recruiting circuits. Because of how early in the build-out these amenities have been completed, they not only already serve the current residents, but also draw potential residents into the community and showcase the future, as approximately 11,000 additional residences are still planned to be built over the next 20 years.
Combining all the best parts of the California Delta’s outdoor lifestyle, over 18 miles of riverfront trails for bicycling and pedestrian use and 11 miles of lakefront access connect neighborhoods to acres of parks and lakes, two town centers, seven schools, an employment center, and a future Valley Link train station. As the new neighborhoods and districts emerge one by one, a true community is being built, based around a shared vision of a fun, green, healthy, and sustainable future.
