Millbrae

Marino Vista Park

Marina Vista Park is the most affordable neighborhood in Millbrae

Marino Vista Park is actually sandwiched between two parks, Marina Vista and Bayside. It’s bordered to the east and west by the Bayshore Freeway and the railroad tracks. Marino Vista Park is not the most picturesque neighborhood in Millbrae. Along with Airport Park, however, it is the most affordable.

Homes in Marino Vista Park are often advertised as being the “most affordable house(s) in Millbrae.” It is not unheard-of for a single-family home to change hands for less than $700,000 – due in part to the neighborhood’s overall affordability and in part to its very small homes, some clocking in at well under 1,000 square feet. A recent neighborhood median found the neighborhood just under $1.1 million.

The bulk of homes in the neighborhood right near the park are two and three bedroom, single-story homes with attached garages and between 1,000 and 1,500 square feet of living space. Lots were small, prices were low – two truths that remain to the present day.

The rest of Marino Vista Park is less consistent. It is comprised of one-off homes, some dating into the 1940s, others edging into the 1960s, and a number of low-rise apartment buildings. The neighborhood is next to El Camino Real and the Millbrae Racquet Club and is within the boundaries for Millbrae schools, a major selling point for a North Millbrae neighborhood. And while Marino Vista Park isn’t one of Millbrae’s highest-profile neighborhoods, it may hold within its boundaries some of the town’s greatest secrets, for it was at the corner of Center Street and El Camino Real, now at the northwest corner of Marino Vista Park, that the legendary 16 Mile House originally stood.

  • 151

    Homes

  • $0.97M

    Median Sale Price

  • $0.97M

    Average Sale Price

Pricing data based on single-family homes

Marino Vista Park on the Map

Schools & History

History

Some of Pietro Ottonello’s descendants still live in Millbrae, but even they must find it difficult to imagine how different his 30 acres of fields — bounded by Santa Paula Avenue, Bay Street, San Jose Avenue and Monterey Street — were in his day. Back then, Mills Field was so small that its infrequent takeoffs and landings were oddities, not annoyances. The two-lane Bayshore Highway had not yet completed its ambitious journey from San Francisco to Burlingame.

Ottonello chose this setting to break away from the Millbrae norm; where others – like the Brizzolaris, who had greenhouses just south of his land — grew flowers, he would grow vegetables. His farm thrived in the 1940s.

By now Mills Field was San Francisco International Airport. The Bayshore Highway was now a roaring, eight-lane freeway. Times had changed. An aging Pietro Ottonello chose to change, as well. He sold the farm to a local developer named Karnery Barberian, who built a small, neat neighborhood of modest, entry-level single-family homes on the plot. The neighborhood was called “Marino Vista Park,” after Marina Vista Park, which lay just north of the new neighborhood.

Pietro Ottonello passed away in 1955. By then, the heart of Marino Vista Park – his former land – was completely built out.

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