Burlingame is having a major moment. The Peninsula city that was once known mainly as a pit stop for airport hotels is now attracting tech companies fleeing San Francisco, Mountain View, Palo Alto, and San Mateo. And the catalyst? A beautifully preserved 1941 post office that’s been given new life as 220 Park, a 185,000-square-foot office complex that’s already fully leased.

The post office, built during the New Deal era in a Spanish/Art Deco hybrid style, was the heart of downtown Burlingame for over 75 years before closing in 2015. It then sat vacant for nearly a decade, basically a dead zone in the middle of the city’s commercial center. But everything changed when developers Sares Regis Group of Northern California (SRGNC) and Dostart Development Company saw potential where others saw problems.

The partnership between these two firms was born out of necessity. After the pandemic made ground-up construction financing nearly impossible, the developers realized they needed each other’s expertise. SRGNC, primarily a housing developer, had the inside track on the property through a personal relationship with the family that owned the land. Dostart brought two decades of office development experience from nearby Los Altos and Mountain View. Interestingly, the partnership was strengthened by the fact that Dostart’s Mollie Ricker had been mentored by SRGNC cofounder Mark Kroll when he was her real estate professor at Stanford.

What makes 220 Park special isn’t just the architecture, it’s how the developers pulled off something that usually gets stuck in regulatory limbo. When Burlingame rezoned the site in 2020, the city allowed developers to exceed the standard 55-foot height cap in exchange for historic preservation. The resulting six-story tower is now the tallest building in Burlingame by a significant margin, yet the original post office remains intact and preserved.

Here’s where it gets wild: to protect the post office during construction, the developers literally moved the entire foundation 120 feet away using giant beams beneath it, built a two-level underground garage, and then moved it back to its original spot. That kind of engineering flexibility required a smart compromise, the city allowed demolition of one of the post office’s two wings to make room for public infrastructure upgrades.

Leasing 185,000 square feet of office space post-pandemic wasn’t guaranteed to succeed, but 220 Park went from 5% to 90% leased in just nine months. The secret sauce? The combination of Caltrain proximity, walkable downtown dining and retail, and a generational shift in tech leadership. Decision-makers are increasingly moving to the Peninsula suburbs and looking for places with actual downtown vibrancy.

Later this year, the Bacchus Group, owners of Michelin-starred San Francisco restaurant Spruce, will open a restaurant and bar inside the historic structure. The city is also building a new town square on the adjacent lot. Burlingame’s transformation from airport hotel suburb to genuine destination is officially underway.