Centerville's Rebuilt Fremont Boulevard Is Nearly Finished. The Train Depot in the Middle of It Is on a Slower Clock.

The Centerville Train Depot sells about seven paper tickets a day. It is reportedly the only No. 23-style Southern Pacific depot still working as an active train station. This fall it sits beside a repaved Fremont Boulevard and upgraded signals on Thornton Avenue, with flashing beacons on Fremont Boulevard among the last items on the City's list. The City describes the project area as the heart of the Centerville commercial district, close to AC Transit lines and the Centerville ACE/Amtrak station.

The street project is in its last weeks. The building at the center of the district is not. Its café has a new leaseholder and no announced opening. Its plaza has an approved concept and a 2027 construction start. The train horns that sound through Centerville have no construction date at all. Those three depend on a council lease, a $1.5 million grant and four railroad and regulatory agencies, and none of them moves when the paving crews finish.

The street runs on a construction calendar

The Centerville Complete Streets project covers Fremont Boulevard from Alder to Eggers, plus Thornton Avenue and Peralta Boulevard. The City could take on a rebuild this large because this road used to be State Route 84, and the state handed it over to local control. The old road had been built to highway standards, with wide lanes, wide intersections and gaps in its sidewalks and bike lanes.

Here is the City's milestone list as it stands:

1. Traffic signal improvements along Thornton Avenue: completed
2. Repaving of Thornton Avenue, Fremont Boulevard and Peralta Boulevard: completed
3. Fremont Boulevard and Thornton Avenue intersection improvements: end of September
4. Sidewalks, curbs and driveways along northbound Fremont Boulevard: end of September
5. Permanent roadway striping: early October
6. Permanent roadway signs, the Thornton Avenue sidewalk replacement and the Fremont Boulevard flashing beacons: mid-October
7. Final cleanup: mid-to-late fall

These are targets. The page carries no date stamp and does not call the project complete. The schedule has already moved twice. The City's November 7, 2025 bulletin said work was shifting from Thornton to Fremont Boulevard and planned the final paving for summer 2026. By the June 25, 2026 bulletin, completion was expected by the end of August. The current page runs into late fall. Until cleanup wraps up, the City says lane closures may happen between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. All driveways stay open, and temporary detours route people on foot and on bikes around each work zone.

When the crews leave, anyone who uses this stretch every day will find several changes:

• Fremont and Thornton. The corners are raised and larger to hold the many people who wait to cross there, and the crossing distances are shorter. Crosswalks are high-visibility and the curb ramps meet ADA standards. The westbound Thornton right-turn lane is gone because few drivers used it. The southbound Fremont and eastbound Thornton right-turn lanes stay, because demand for those turns is high.
• A raised, separated bikeway on Fremont Boulevard between Thornton and Central Avenue.
• A new traffic signal at Thornton and Oak Street, and an upgraded signal at Dusterberry Way.
• A pedestrian flashing beacon at the Artist Walk driveway.
• New on-street parking on Fremont Boulevard and improved transit stops.

The project deliberately stops short in two places. Near the railroad crossing, the City says improvements will come later with the Centerville Railroad Safety Improvement project. South of Peralta, they will come with a planned private development. The stretch by the tracks is the part of Centerville most tied to the depot, and it is also the part this project leaves for later.

The depot café runs on a lease

The depot has been a neighborhood landmark for a long time. According to Tri-City Voice, Dirk and Lisa Lorenz ran businesses there from the building's restoration and grand opening in 1999. Lisa ran the Depot Diner/Cafe inside the station. Dirk ran Fremont Flowers, a business that began in the depot in 1956, which he bought in 1984 and sold in 2024. The paper reports that the couple showed the station to visitors at Depot Days and on historic home tours, and that Dirk decorated it with memorabilia about Centerville's past. In 2022, new operators joined the lease and took over the café, renamed East Bay Cafe. Tri-City Voice says it drew a loyal following for its Filipino menu.

The lease came up for decision this year. The item was first on the City Council's May 12 agenda. The council postponed the vote to June so it could hear from all sides, and on June 16 it gave a five-year lease to a new operator. Tri-City Voice reports that everyone involved called it an open and fair process.

The City's plans for the building go beyond a café. In the same Tri-City Voice article, City real property agent Ian Champeny said the City hopes to lease the space to a single tenant instead of splitting the office and café, and wants a partner who can help "activate the inside and outside space," plan programming, and market and schedule events. The City has not announced when the new tenant will open, what the café will be called, its hours or its menu.

The plaza runs on a grant timeline

The space outside the depot is on its own, slower schedule. The City's August 7, 2026 newsletter reported that the Centerville Train Depot Plaza Improvements Project had won approval of its final concept plan from the Historical Architectural Review Board. Design is due by the end of 2026, and construction is expected to start in summer 2027.

A $1.5 million Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities grant pays for the plaza, tied to the RCD housing project at 3900 Thornton Avenue. The grant explains the plaza's goals. It is meant to improve transit access, give Centerville a gateway and landmark, and create a gathering and event space for residents. Details are on the City's plaza project page.

So the depot's new tenant arrives in time to operate through plaza construction, and the City has said it wants that tenant to schedule events in the space. A five-year lease that started in mid-2026 runs until about 2031. If construction starts in summer 2027 as planned, much of the first half of the lease will overlap with work outside the door.

The train horns run on federal approvals

Of the four schedules, the quiet zone has the fewest firm dates. The City's Centerville Railroad Safety Improvements page describes a plan to add safety upgrades at six at-grade crossings: Blacow Road, Dusterberry Way, Maple Avenue, Fremont Boulevard, Shinn Street and Clarke Drive. Once those are in place, the federal requirement for trains to sound their horns at these crossings would no longer apply. The work involves Union Pacific Railroad, the California Public Utilities Commission, the Federal Railroad Administration and ACE.

The City Council approved a notice of intent to create the quiet zone on December 14, 2021. Here is how the schedule looks now:

The two Q4 2026 steps are the only ones with dates, and both are paperwork. Everything after them, from construction to the day the horns stop, is still undated. The project is listed as a priority for implementation by 2030 in Alameda County's Countywide Transportation Plan.

Four schedules, one block

Here is where the four pieces around the depot stand this week:

The street work near the railroad crossing waits on the quiet-zone project, so the blocks closest to the depot will be the last part of this corridor to change. After the street cleanup, the next dated items are the quiet zone's two Q4 2026 filings and the plaza's design deadline at the end of 2026, followed by plaza construction in summer 2027.

With more than 35 years in Fremont real estate, the Joe Schembri Real Estate Team keeps watching the projects around the depot as they move from plans to construction. If you want to know how these projects could affect a home near Fremont Boulevard, Thornton Avenue or the rail line, let's connect.