"I want shovels in the ground as soon as possible," Mary Grizzle told San José Spotlight in July 2025. Grizzle co-chairs Reclaiming Our Downtown. At the time she was pressing the city to ask developers for bids on the two city-owned blocks at the center of the old downtown, so everyone could learn what the land was worth and what could actually be built there.
On October 1, 2026, the City of Santa Clara did exactly that. A city bulletin announced it was accepting proposals to redevelop a 4.8-acre city-owned property downtown. Read the list of requested components closely and almost every line maps to something that once stood within a few hundred feet of that site. The city is asking a developer to build the downtown back.
The lot already had a trial run
The site is 900 and 1000 Lafayette Street, 4.83 acres covering most of what the Downtown Precise Plan calls Blocks A and B. If that address sounds familiar, there's a good reason. The city's 2026 Night Market with Classic Cars took place at 900 Lafayette on May 2, and the Artisanal Art & Wine night market was held at the same address on July 17. The mayor's calendar lists Celebrate Santa Clara Night Markets there on May 1, with more dates running July 17 through 19.
So the property the city just put out to bid spent the summer working as a temporary town square. The RFP asks for a permanent one.
Eight blocks, then and now
Santa Clara's old civic and commercial core covered eight blocks. A 2017 Mercury News op-ed lists what stood there: City Hall, the Santa Clara Theater, Wilson's Bakery, Wade's Pharmacy and the Santa Clara Creamery. Redevelopment-era demolition in the 1960s took most of it down. The historic post office was one of the few buildings that survived. Sources disagree on timing. Reclaiming Our Downtown dates the demolition to 1964, while theater records place that building's loss in the late 1960s, so the clearance is best read as a process that played out over the decade.
Strip malls and scattered buildings replaced the street grid. Franklin Mall became a small pedestrian-mall substitute, and the Franklin Square area got landscaping, signage and parking improvements around 2000 and 2001. Franklin Square now sits on part of the old grid, and the surviving post office stands where Franklin Street used to run.
Compare that history with the RFP's list of components:
| What the RFP requests | What it answers to |
|---|---|
| Extensions of Franklin and Washington Streets through the site | The street grid removed in the clearance, with Franklin Street now interrupted at the post office |
| A theater re-creating the historic Santa Clara Theater | The Santa Clara Theater, closed in 1965 |
| A town square/arts commons plaza | The center the old civic core once provided |
| A two-story food and beverage hall and ground-floor retail | Main-street businesses like Wilson's Bakery, Wade's Pharmacy and the Santa Clara Creamery |
| A cultural arts space | A civic anchor for the blocks |
| At least 300 residential units, plus parking and excess parking for Downtown | New elements the old downtown did not have in this form |
The housing comes with conditions from the state's Surplus Land Act. Twenty-five percent of the units must be affordable to and occupied by low-income households for 55 years if they are rentals, or 45 years if they are for-sale homes.
One line item names a specific building
Most of the RFP describes general categories of space. The theater line names one particular building. The Santa Clara Theater opened as the Casa Grande Theatre on November 1, 1927, and reopened under the Santa Clara name on June 4, 1938. It closed in 1965 and was demolished during the late-1960s urban renewal.
That makes the theater the RFP's clearest statement of intent. Asking for a theater recreated after a building that has been gone for nearly sixty years only makes sense as an act of restoration. It also sets a high bar for whoever responds. The two-phase review described below asks shortlisted teams for detailed site plans, renderings and commercial leasing and operations plans, so a proposal that treats the theater as an afterthought will show it.
Why it took from 2023 to this fall
The plan itself came from residents. City workshops collected input on a downtown vision from October 2015 through November 2017. Here is how it went from there:
- June 2016: Rod Dunham founds Reclaiming Our Downtown. Linda Mello is among the first helpers, and Mary Grizzle, Donna West and Dan Ondrasek join soon after.
- 2018–19: The group surveys residents by knocking on doors and tabling at events. Ondrasek says the survey found 85% put downtown ahead of other large developments, including El Camino Real and Related Santa Clara.
- December 4, 2018: The City Council approves the Downtown Community Task Force.
- December 5, 2023: The Council adopts the Downtown Precise Plan and Form-Based Zoning Code for the plan area bounded by Benton, Lafayette, Homestead and Madison.
- July 2025: San José Spotlight reports little movement since adoption. A city spokesperson points to high construction costs and difficult financing.
- January 2026: City Manager Jovan Grogan writes that the RFP is expected within two months.
- October 1, 2026: The RFP is released.
Much of the delay comes down to who owns the land. The city owns roughly six acres of downtown, and the remaining 21 acres are private property. District 5 Councilmember Suds Jain said in 2025 that building on Blocks A and B would probably mean going through the Surplus Land Act process, and he raised concerns about fitting the plan's retail into an affordable housing project. The RFP addresses this directly. It cites a specific Surplus Land Act exemption, combines the 25% affordability requirement with the food hall and retail, and leaves the rest of the mix to the market.
The groundwork also showed up in leases. Jain said the city had stopped renewing leases for tenants on city-owned land inside the project area. On private land nearby, Taplands co-owner Matt Hartenstein said his business's 10-year lease ran out in 2025 and the landlord would only offer five more years. Hartenstein said he wants downtown to become a focal point, the way Castro Street is for Mountain View or Murphy Avenue is for Sunnyvale.
The dates between now and a decision
Wednesday, Nov. 18: mandatory in-person pre-proposal conference at the American Legion, 958 Homestead Road. Developers who want to submit must attend.
January 14, 2027, 3:00 p.m. PST: response deadline listed on the city's BidNet posting.
After the deadline, the review runs in two phases. Phase I judges preliminary vision, amenities, developer qualifications and financial capacity. Shortlisted teams then submit detailed plans in Phase II, and the City Council makes the final selection. The city page gives no dates for the shortlist or the Council vote. Anyone who wants to read the document itself can open the public version through the city's Downtown Mixed Use Project RFP page.
Neighbors are watching too. Old Quad Resident Association President Jonathon Evans told San José Spotlight that people from the neighborhood helped shape the plan, and that residents will likely have more to say about redevelopment of city land than of private property.
The blocks around the site stay busy in the meantime
The rebuild would connect to a downtown that already runs on its own calendar. Last weekend's 57th Parade of Champions, held October 3, centered on Franklin Square. The day opened with the 8 a.m. Breakfast of Champions at the American Legion, the same hall that will host developers on November 18. Booths and food trucks lined Franklin Street, and a Sports FAN Zone was set up at Benton and Jackson. In August, a free Street Dance took over Franklin Square on the evening of August 7.
The weekly routines are close by as well. The Santa Clara Farmers Market sets up every Saturday, year-round, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Jackson Street and Homestead Road. Taplands, at 1171 Homestead Road, updated its tap list today. Inside Franklin Mall, the visitor directory lists Jasmine Thai Cuisine at 1211 Franklin Mall and Rantei Japanese Cuisine at 1271 Franklin Mall.
If the Franklin Street extension gets built, the street that now stops at the post office in Franklin Square would continue through the lot where this summer's night markets set up.
If you live near the Old Quad or Franklin Square and want to know what a project like this could mean for your own address, Harpreet Dhaliwal can walk you through a free home valuation now and help you track the downtown timeline as proposals come in after January 14.
