San Mateo supervisors direct staff to negotiate purchase of Burlingame site to reopen sobering center amid neighborhood fight

San Mateo County supervisors on April 7 directed county staff to pursue negotiations to buy a roughly 2‑acre property in Burlingame (addresses on Bayshore Highway and Mahler Road) that county executives say could quickly house a reopened First Chance sobering center and other behavioral‑health services.

County Executive Mike Caligi told the board the county has a letter of intent for the site at $13,000,000 and said the county would seek to subdivide the parcel so a provider such as Horizon could use part of it and potentially repay roughly half the purchase price from state grant dollars. “If we were able to strike a deal and if the state was amenable to changing the grant for Horizon, we could sell half the property,” Caligi said, adding that reopening First Chance at the Burlingame site could happen in months after due diligence and modest modernization. Caligi said the alternative — building a new Horizon facility at the San Mateo/El Camino site — could take 18 to 24 months to construct.

Horizon Treatment Services’ chief program officer, Daria, told supervisors…