Bailey Canyon Estates

A national builder on a hillside site someone else entitled

Toll Brothers is building 42 single-family homes on roughly 17 acres of the former Mater Dolorosa Retreat Center in northwest Sierra Madre. The Planning Commission approved the project's design review permit in January 2026, the City Council affirmed it on appeal in February, and site work and soil cleanup are already done. Toll Brothers is marketing the community as Bailey Canyon Estates, with sales expected to open late 2026.

What's proposed

• 42 detached single-family homes in three plan types, roughly 3,200 to 3,775 sq ft
• At least 25% of homes are the smaller one-story Plan 1; no more than 40% can be the largest, Plan 3
• About 9.2 of the 17.3-acre parcel goes to the homes themselves
• A public park, landscape buffers, and open-space lots take up most of the rest

What it's replacing

The land was part of the Mater Dolorosa Retreat Center campus, a Passionist religious retreat at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains, adjacent to Bailey Canyon Wilderness Park. The retreat center sold this portion of its grounds for development; the remainder of the campus is not part of the project.

How it got here

The site needed its own specific plan — the Meadows at Bailey Canyon Specific Plan — because its prior designation didn't allow residential use at this density. That plan went through a full Environmental Impact Report, certified in 2022. Once the specific plan was in place, the design review permit that followed only needed a Notice of Exemption rather than a second full CEQA review, because state law treats a project that simply implements an already-studied specific plan differently from one proposing something new. An appeal of the design review approval was filed after the Planning Commission's January 2026 vote; the City Council held a new hearing on the same record and affirmed the approval in February.

Where it stands

Entitled, with grading and soil remediation already done — but not yet under vertical construction. Toll Brothers is marketing the community as coming soon on its own Bailey Canyon Estates community page, with home sales expected to open in late 2026 and pricing anticipated to start in the $3.6 millions. Whether building permits for the homes themselves have been issued has not been confirmed.