THE LEDE
Blackhawk Plaza Is Finally Going Up for Sale
For months, the question hanging over Blackhawk Plaza wasn't whether it would change hands, it was when. Now there's an answer: soon.
A status report filed July 1 in the bankruptcy case for Ramanujan Group LLC, the plaza's owner, confirms the property is headed to market. Attorneys wrote that the debtor and its lender Iron Condor are finalizing a listing agreement with KW Commercial and CBRE, who will jointly handle the sale. The plaza was appraised at $57.38 million back in 2023. Brokers now believe it's worth more.
That's a striking jump from the $38 million Ramanujan Group paid for the plaza in the first place, a purchase that also saddled the property with $35.8 million in liens and $657,111 in unpaid property taxes. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March, a move that paused a receivership a judge had ordered after Ramanujan defaulted on a $5 million loan from Nano Banc.
The same July 1 filing asked the bankruptcy court for a 90-day extension on a disclosure plan deadline, citing delays in getting financial information from the outgoing receiver. We don't have confirmation on whether the court granted that extension at the July 15 hearing; we'll report back once we know.
The county's tracking page on the case adds a piece we hadn't seen in that filing: Howard Grobstein, who's been serving as the company's court-appointed manager since April, is expected to be formally appointed Chief Restructuring Officer on August 5. From there, the county says a transition from the current receiver to Grobstein should take about 60 days, with a sale targeted for this fall.
Worth knowing: Andrew Stupin, the real estate investor behind Ramanujan Group, is tangled up in far more than just this property. He's also a guarantor on loans connected to Cantor Group, the subject of separate lawsuits alleging roughly $108 million in losses, and his firm was reportedly raided by the FBI last year. His attorney told DanvilleSanRamon.com that Stupin supports the management change at the plaza.
For now, nothing about daily life at Blackhawk Plaza changes. JLL Property Management continues running day-to-day operations under the receivership, and county officials say there's still no application on file to redevelop the site into housing, something that would be unlikely to happen before a sale closes anyway. But “unlikely before a sale” is a very different sentence than the one we were writing a few months ago. A sale is now the plan, not a rumor.
We'll keep tracking this one closely. The county's FAQ page lags behind actual court filings, so treat August 5 as the date to watch rather than a done deal.
THE RUNDOWN
Town Council upholds church housing appeal, 3-1, per unofficial account
Neighbors of Community Presbyterian Church appealed the Planning Commission's unanimous approval of a 68-unit townhome project on the church's West El Pintado property. We haven't found a confirmed vote count from the town or a local news outlet. The only account we've seen of Tuesday's (July 21) meeting comes from OpGov.News, a site that publishes AI-generated meeting summaries alongside staff opinion pieces and carries its own disclaimer that content “may not be fully accurate or complete” and should be checked against official sources. With that caveat, its account reports the Council voted 3-1 to deny the appeal and uphold the project: Newell Arnerich, Mark Belotz and Robert Storer voting yes, Karen Stepper no, and Renee Morgan absent. The resulting resolution reportedly sends the project back to the Design Review Board for architectural and landscaping adjustments only, not a review of its size or scope. We're treating this as a lead, not a confirmed fact, until we can check it against the town's official minutes or resolution text; we'll update once they post.
SRVUSD headquarters may be next up for sale
The district's board considered a resolution July 28 to declare its current Danville headquarters at 699 Old Orchard Drive as surplus property and put it on the market, part of the district's move to a new site in San Ramon. The plan is meant to help close a persistent budget deficit. We don't yet have confirmation the board approved it; will follow up.
Town Council nomination window closes August 7
Two seats are up for grabs this fall, the one held by Karen Stepper, who's not seeking reelection, and Robert Storer's. If no incumbent files, the window extends automatically to August 12. We don't have any confirmed candidate filings to report as of this writing.
FAMILY AND KIDS
New rule: walk your e-bike once you're in the park
Starting August 6, e-bikes and scooters will need to be walked, not ridden, inside every Danville park. The Town Council adopted the rule July 13, about a week after passing a separate, broader e-bike ordinance on July 7. This one applies specifically to park boundaries: riders can still bring their bikes in, they just can't ride them once they're inside. The town plans signage at parks and outreach through SRVUSD in the coming weeks. If your kid rides to the park after school, this is worth a heads-up before the 6th.
MEANWHILE, ON NEXTDOOR…
A weekly, lightly anonymized roundup of what neighbors are talking about.
THE LEGACY PROJECT, LITIGATED ON THE INTERNET. News that the Town Council upheld approval of Community Presbyterian Church's expansion set off one of the more heated threads of the summer. Critics tallied up demolished homes and removed trees and called for accountability at the next meeting; supporters countered that a church expansion beats more condos, with at least one commenter typing entirely in capital letters to make sure everyone heard them. A tangent about megachurch televangelists followed, as these things do, along with a genuinely fair question about how the same objections would land if it were a mosque instead of a church. Nobody answered it.
BLACKHAWK PLAZA'S RESTAURANTS WANT YOU TO KNOW THEY'RE STILL OPEN. A post reminding neighbors that Fat Maddie's and its plaza neighbors are alive and well drew a wave of enthusiastic support, several fish taco endorsements, and one very of-the-moment aside about the plaza's “landlord drama.” Multiple commenters confirmed sightings of the pond being refilled, prompting cautious optimism that the patio view might return to normal soon. The restaurant's own reply summed up the plaza's year better than we could: fingers crossed.
THE GREAT CHINESE TAKEOUT DEBATE, CONTINUED. One resident's search for classic, unapologetically bright red sweet and sour chicken turned into one of the week's longest threads, with recommendations pulled from Danville, Dublin, San Ramon, Pleasanton and Walnut Creek. A couple of the most-hyped spots came with asterisks: conflicting reports on whether one had closed, a kitchen fire at another, and a full-throated defense of a place neighbors admitted looks a little rough from the parking lot but is worth trusting anyway. The overall consensus: the less authentic and more neon, the better, and nobody was ashamed to admit it.
THE NEW E-BIKE RULE SPARKED A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE. News of a teen getting called out for riding an e-bike through a park turned into a genuinely sweet thread about homemade backyard ramps, scraped knees and BMX glory days, with a couple of longtime residents noting that neighborhood kids from decades back went on to real BMX and stunt careers. Most agreed kids should get to chase whatever their version of that is, so long as it stays off the Iron Horse Trail and away from pedestrians. One dad's summary of the generational gap stuck with us: BMX makes you do the work yourself, e-bikes do it for you.
ONLY IN DANVILLE
The ducks of Blackhawk Plaza have had a rough summer. When the plaza's pond closed for repairs earlier this season, the domestic ducks who call it home were left without water, food, or much of a plan. Neighbors and plaza management stepped in with makeshift feeding and cleanup while they waited on replacement parts, but it wasn't enough for everyone: a family of Canada geese lost both parents to vehicle strikes nearby, leaving three goslings to fend for themselves before rescuers caught up with them. The domestic ducks, one female and three males, were eventually taken in by Charlie's Acres sanctuary in Sonoma County for quarantine and are now headed to Oak Rock Animal Preserve in the San Ramon Valley, where they'll be put up for adoption. Replacement parts for the pond are expected to arrive by August, though we don't have a firm date for when it'll be running again. Even Blackhawk Plaza's waterfowl have had to sit through the receivership.
ON THE CALENDAR
Danville Library & Community Center 30th Anniversary | Tuesday, August 4, Town Green, 400 Front St. Storytime at 11:15 a.m., a free kids' concert with Asheba at noon, then book-themed crafts. A genuinely nice one for the under-10 crowd, and it happens to land the same day as National Night Out.
National Night Out | Tuesday, August 4, neighborhoods across town. The town's window to request a Danville Police representative for your block party closed July 21, so if you didn't register, plan on a DIY gathering instead. Still one of the better excuses all year to actually meet the people on your street.
Jazz & Juice at Theatre Plaza | Friday, August 21, 6:30 p.m., 233 Front St. The new Theatre Plaza's first public event: a live jazz quartet, complimentary drinks, and a relaxed evening downtown. 21 and older.
THE NUMBER
$657,111
That's how much in unpaid property taxes has piled up on Blackhawk Plaza, on top of $35.8 million in liens, according to the July 1 bankruptcy filing. A useful reminder of just how far underwater the plaza's ownership situation has gotten.
FINAL THOUGHT
A shopping center going up for sale isn't usually a plot twist. But when the ducks have had a harder year than most of the tenants, “up for sale” starts to sound like relief.
THE SIDELINE — FROM THE ARCHIVES
Before the Legacy Project, the Church Already Left Downtown Once
Before Community Presbyterian Church was fighting over 269 trees and 21 homes on West El Pintado, its predecessor congregation had already left downtown once.
The church traces to 1875, when Danville residents gathered at the local schoolhouse and put it to a vote: since the valley had too few people to support a church for every Protestant denomination, they'd build one shared building and let a ballot decide which denomination it would house. Presbyterian won. The resulting New England-style church at 201 Front Street, once called the handsomest church building in the county, stood until a wind-driven fire destroyed it in 1932. Parishioners rebuilt in mission style during the Depression, worshipped there until they outgrew it, and opened a new sanctuary on El Pintado Road in December 1951, the same church now at the center of this issue's Rundown.
The old Front Street building didn't sit empty. It became a teen center, then a school for children with disabilities, then a Sunday school for another congregation, before the Town of Danville bought and restored it in 1988. Today it's the Town Meeting Hall, the same building where the Town Council holds the meetings that decide projects like the one now facing the church that built it.
Source: Museum of the San Ramon Valley, “Danville Town Meeting Hall,” by Beverly Lane, Presenting the Past.
CORRECTION
Issue 23's calendar listed a Van Halen tribute concert at “Ellis Park.” That listing was sourced from Danville, Indiana rather than Danville, California, and should not have run. We've removed it from the online edition and regret the error.
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