Top of the Hill, Serramonte, and Westlake Are All Getting Bigger at Once

Daly City isn't adding new gathering spots this year. It's seeing three familiar anchors expand, each in a different way.

The Top of the Hill Festival returns to the same two-street intersection it's occupied since 2024, except it now needs twice the ground to hold everyone who shows up. Koi Palace, the dim sum institution that's fed Daly City since 1996, isn't opening a second location somewhere new. It's abandoning its original address entirely for a space at Serramonte Center nearly double the size. And Westlake Shopping Center, ground broken in 1949, isn't getting a sister property across town. It's adding apartments directly on top of itself. Three separate decisions, three separate owners, and three different forms of expansion in Daly City.

The Festival That Outgrew Its Own Block

When the Top of the Hill Festival launched in October 2024, it was a modest bet. The city's own promotional material for the following year's event described the debut as drawing over 10,000 attendees and 27 community partners to the intersection of Mission Street and John Daly Boulevard, a free, all-ages street festival built around food trucks, a car show, and live music.

Two years later, the bet has more than doubled down. The third annual festival lands on Saturday, October 17, 2026, from noon to 6 p.m., and organizers now project roughly 20,000 attendees spread across more than half a mile of festival grounds, according to the event's own listing. The location hasn't changed. The footprint has.

That's worth sitting with if you live anywhere near Mission and John Daly. A festival that outgrows its original crowd by a factor of two in two years doesn't need a new venue if it can simply take over more of the street it already has. Expect more of Mission Street closed to traffic than in past years, and expect it to take longer than you remember to get through the Top of the Hill area that Saturday afternoon.

Koi Palace Is Relocating to a Bigger Space in Daly City

Koi Palace has operated out of 365 Gellert Blvd since 1996. It was named a James Beard semifinalist for Outstanding Restaurant in 2024, while still at its original storefront, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. That run at the original address is ending this year, and it's ending in a specific, quantifiable way.

Kron 4 reports that Koi Palace is relocating to a roughly 20,000-square-foot space inside Serramonte Center, on the east side of the mall in a footprint that previously held a Wet Seal, a Subway, and a Starbucks. That Starbucks has already relocated within the mall, next to the Chick-fil-A. Kron 4, citing Regency Centers, the mall's owner, reported that the new Koi Palace will be nearly double the size of the original, with seating for 760 to 800 people. Regency originally targeted a first-quarter 2026 opening. As of the San Francisco Chronicle's mid-July 2026 roundup of anticipated Bay Area restaurant openings, the move still hadn't happened, which tells you more about how these relocations actually go than the original timeline did. Built-out restaurant space of that scale rarely lands on schedule, and if you've been driving past the old Gellert Boulevard location wondering why the lights are still on, that's why.

When it does open, the new Koi Palace is planned to include a koi pond and Chinese art installations built into the dining room, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The planned space will be larger than the original, even if the menu stays recognizable. It's not a new restaurant. It's the same restaurant, set to move two miles into the community's biggest retail anchor.

The 1949 Shopping Center Is Building Housing on Top of Itself

Westlake Shopping Center is old enough to have a Wikipedia entry about its role in postwar suburban development. Developer Henry Doelger bought 1,350 acres of former hog and cabbage farmland in San Mateo County in 1945, and by 1949 he'd broken ground on what would become one of the first shopping malls built in America, a 40-acre retail center anchored originally by J.C. Penney and Woolworth. The uniform tract housing Doelger built around it was distinctive enough to inspire Malvina Reynolds' 1962 song "Little Boxes."

Nearly eight decades later, the same 40-acre footprint is where Daly City's next residential growth is happening, not around it. According to Westlake's own property management site, construction is currently underway on a mixed-use project adding 214 residential units and 10,000 square feet of new retail space directly onto the existing shopping center, which already anchors Home Depot, Trader Joe's, Ross Dress for Less, Safeway, Target, and Walgreens alongside more than 25 restaurants.

That's not a new commercial district opening somewhere in Daly City. It's the original 1949 commercial district absorbing new density rather than ceding ground to something built fresh elsewhere.

The Pattern, If You Live Near Any of These Three Spots

Lay the numbers next to each other and the shape becomes obvious.

These three anchors are expanding in Daly City in different ways. A festival took over more of the same street. Koi Palace is relocating to a larger space two miles away, inside the town's largest mall rather than a new commercial strip. A shopping center old enough to have inspired a folk song is adding housing to its existing site.

If you live near Top of the Hill, that means denser foot traffic and tighter parking on festival weekends going forward, not just this October. If you're a regular at the Gellert Boulevard Koi Palace, it means a favorite spot is moving from its original location to a larger space, and the timeline for that move has already slipped once. And if Westlake is your daily loop for groceries and errands, the mall you've been driving through for years is quietly becoming a place people also live, not just shop.

The common thread is not that every project stays put, but that familiar Daly City destinations are taking on a bigger role in daily life.

Daniel Choi tracks these shifts block by block because they shape what a home near Top of the Hill, Serramonte, or Westlake is worth understanding today versus a year from now. If you're curious what any of this means for your corner of Daly City, Daniel Choi is happy to walk through it. Schedule a free consultation anytime.