For years, Castro Valley Boulevard was the street you drove through on the way to somewhere else. Redwood Road to the hills, 580 to Dublin, BART to the city. That is no longer the shape of a summer weekend here.
Between the old Rite Aid becoming the largest Cantonese restaurant in the country, the Marketplace turning First Fridays into a monthly street party, and the Rowell Ranch parade expanding into a five-hour festival that closes the boulevard, downtown has quietly become the destination rather than the corridor. If you have lived here more than a couple of years, the map in your head is out of date.
Here is what changed, and what to actually do about it before Labor Day.
The Rite Aid block is now a dim sum destination
The most visible shift is on the 3800 block. Rite Aid closed in August 2023 and speculation ran the usual gamut of Sprouts, car wash, furniture store. Instead, Castro Valley resident Ming Y Li got Alameda County approval in August 2024 for a very different plan: a Cantonese banquet hall and an Asian grocery under one roof.
HL Peninsula opened at 3868 Castro Valley Blvd on October 16, 2025. It spans 28,000 square feet, seats around 900 in the main hall plus nine private VIP rooms, and the operators claim it is the largest Cantonese restaurant in the United States. For context, the Kowloon Restaurant in Saugus, Massachusetts, which has held a similar claim, tops out around 1,200; HL Peninsula's total capacity, with the VIP rooms, is roughly 1,250.
A few things to know before you go:
- Dim sum is handmade daily. Weekend lunch service runs 10:00 a.m. to 2:15 p.m., which is when the carts and the crowds matter.
- Weekday lunch is 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., dinner 5:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., seven days.
- Parking is free in front. The building reads more like a retail box than a restaurant from the sidewalk, which is throwing off first-time visitors.
Next door is Mei Mei Market, part of the same development. Between the two, that stretch of Castro Valley Boulevard now pulls traffic in from Hayward, San Leandro, and Dublin that used to bypass downtown entirely.
First Fridays turned the Marketplace into an evening
The Castro Valley Marketplace at 3295 Castro Valley Blvd has been an artisanal food hall since 2019, but the recent shift is that it is finally acting like one after dark. General hours are 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily, though individual merchants set their own schedules.
The First Friday event, 5 to 8 p.m. on the first Friday of every month, brings local vendors, live music, and family activities into the building and the Paseo outside. It is free, it is monthly, and it is the closest thing downtown has to a recurring civic gathering that is not tied to a holiday.
The merchant mix is worth relearning if you have not been through in a while:
- Akemi Sushi on the ground floor, made to order, daily 10:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.
- Amphora Nueva Olive Oil Works for tasting flights of oil and balsamic, daily 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.
- Baron's Quality Meats & Seafood, a traditional butcher counter, Sun-Fri 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Sat 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.
- Seven Hills Baking Co. for bread, with a seasonal Irish soda bread that regulars mourn between runs
- Beard Papa's cream puffs, opened by a Castro Valley native at the Boulevard entrance
- The Cannery Kitchen & Tap for full sit-down meals with indoor and Paseo seating
- Pizza The Bay upstairs, which Eater SF has singled out for its sourdough pies
- Night Owl and Oculto for evening cocktails
Two practical notes. Health code keeps pets out of the food hall, though service animals are welcome. And the second floor is easy to miss from the entry, so if you have only ever eaten downstairs, you have skipped a third of the building.
Saturday mornings still belong to the farmers market
The Castro Valley Farmers Market runs Saturdays in the BART station parking lot at the corner of Redwood Road and Norbridge Avenue. It is one of the few Bay Area markets that pairs EBT with a dollar-for-dollar match up to $15 in fresh produce, and it also accepts WIC, Veggie Rx, and Beet Bucks. That is real money staying in the neighborhood's food economy, not marketing copy.
The geography matters more than it looks. Walk out of the market, cross under the BART tracks, and you are two blocks from the Marketplace. A Saturday routine of market first, coffee and pastry at the Marketplace second, then home by mid-morning is how a lot of longtime residents now organize their weekend. It did not used to be possible to do that without a car trip in between.
The summer calendar, without the fluff
Most of what is worth putting on the calendar clusters in a six-week window. The events below are all on Castro Valley Boulevard or at Rowell Ranch, not scattered across the region.
| Date | Event | Where | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 14, 2026 | Rowell Ranch Pro Rodeo opens | 9725 Dublin Canyon Rd | Over a century of continuous tradition; sets up parade weekend |
| Rodeo weekend Saturday | History Festival + Pro Rodeo Parade | Castro Valley Blvd | Festival 3-9 p.m., parade at 6 p.m., boulevard closed |
| Sat, June 20, 2026 | Castro Valley Car Show | Castro Valley Blvd | Vintage and custom cars, local food, live music, 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. |
| July 10-11, 2026 | Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo | Rowell Ranch | The country's touring Black rodeo, hosted at Rowell Ranch |
| Aug 22, 2026 | Splendor of Sitar, Purbayan Chatterjee | Castro Valley Center for the Arts | The kind of programming that used to require a trip to Berkeley |
| Sept 5-6, 2026 | Castro Valley Fall Festival | Downtown | Labor Day weekend anchor |
Two of those deserve a second look.
The Rowell Ranch Rodeo Parade used to be a straightforward morning parade. Under the Rowell Ranch Rodeo Committee's direction, it now runs alongside a three-to-nine p.m. Castro Valley History Festival with street vendors, displays, and food, with the parade itself stepping off at 6 p.m. rather than the traditional daytime slot. The boulevard shuts down for the whole thing. If you have not been in a few years, plan for evening, not morning, and plan to walk.
The Fall Festival, on Labor Day weekend, is the closest thing Castro Valley has to a hometown fair. It runs the same weekend as Pleasanton's Scottish Highland Gathering, and locals who used to default east now often stay put.
The through-line
Any one of these on its own is a nice update. Together they mean something more specific: the boulevard now supports a full day. You can pick up cherries at the farmers market at 9, browse the butcher counter at 10, catch First Friday with kids at 6, or sit down for dim sum with visiting parents at 11:30 on a Sunday. The parts connect on foot, which is new. As recently as five years ago, downtown had gaps you had to drive across.
That has a quieter effect on how the neighborhood feels day to day. Streets that generate their own foot traffic tend to attract more of the small operators that make a place worth living in, and Castro Valley Marketplace board member Donna Layburn has said openly that the Marketplace's approach is to keep rotating in independent vendors rather than lean on national chains. Beard Papa is a chain, yes, but the operator grew up here. Pizza The Bay, The Cannery, Seven Hills, Akemi are not names you find in every suburb.
A short bookmark list
If you are only going to remember four things from this post:
- HL Peninsula weekend dim sum, before 12:30 if you want to avoid the wait. The building looks like a retail store from the outside.
- First Fridays at the Marketplace, 5 to 8 p.m., first Friday of the month, year-round.
- Saturday farmers market at the BART lot, corner of Redwood and Norbridge.
- Rowell Ranch Parade + History Festival, evening, boulevard closed. Bring folding chairs and eat there.
The boulevard has stopped being scenery on the way home. Treat it that way, and you get a much better summer out of it.
If you have been in the neighborhood a while and are starting to think about what your home is worth in a downtown that keeps drawing new energy, Annie Tegner and the team can put together a free East Bay home valuation whenever you are ready. No pressure, just a clear read on where your block sits today. You can also see more on the Castro Valley neighborhood page or request a valuation directly.
