At 356 Santana Row, Hoka has a small storefront with a "Coming Soon!" listing on the center's directory. It will be Hoka's first Bay Area store. The space is roughly 850 square feet, and until this year it was Arc'teryx. The San Jose Blog reported in August that marketing materials posted at the site pointed to a fall opening.
Arc'teryx stayed in the area. It moved across the boulevard into a larger 1,700-square-foot store inside Westfield Valley Fair. That move is the clearest sign of a bigger shift. This year, most of the new places to eat on this stretch of Stevens Creek opened inside the mall. Santana Row lost its biggest dining rooms and is refilling with apparel, a fitness club and counter-service food.
Valley Fair spent 2026 building a dining floor
Westfield Valley Fair sits at 2855 Stevens Creek Blvd. and straddles the San Jose and Santa Clara line. Its biggest opening of the year came in June. Asia Live is a 15,000-square-foot pan-Asian food hall from the team behind San Francisco's China Live, with 350 seats and open kitchen stations covering Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Indian and other regional cooking. Heytea was already open by mid-August, and Starbucks had moved one floor up into a bigger space.
The fall brought more. On Oct. 1, the Mercury News listed four restaurants management had announced, and several have since opened:
- Chubby Tan grills thick-cut beef tongue over binchotan charcoal, the signature dish of Sendai, Japan. The Silicon Valley Business Journal reported it open on Oct. 5.
- Izumi Revolving Sushi, which already runs a location at Westfield Oakridge in South San Jose, opened in the same Business Journal report.
- Chagee Modern Teahouse is the Chinese tea chain's first Bay Area location after a run of Southern California shops. The Business Journal covered its Valley Fair debut in June.
- Kajiken serves brothless Japanese noodles and is slated for early 2027.
The mall has also invested in reasons to stay. In August, The San Jose Blog, summarizing Silicon Valley Business Journal reporting, wrote that Alamo Drafthouse, The Great Big Game Show and Sandbox VR help push visits past two and a half hours for most guests. The center has also added dedicated pickup parking and drive-thru windows at some restaurants. A food hall, a run of new regional restaurants and a movie theater all fit that strategy of keeping people in the building longer.
Santana Row lost three dining rooms in a single week
For years, Santana Row's sit-down dinner scene meant a few large restaurants. In June, three of them closed at once. San Jose-based Vine Hospitality shut down after failing to raise enough capital to keep operating, and its closures took out Left Bank, LB Steak and Meso Modern Mediterranean, according to the Mercury News. The state layoff notice listed 73 jobs at Left Bank Santana Row, 59 at LB Steak Santana Row and 54 at Meso. That's 186 positions on one street, more than half of the 353 restaurant jobs the company cut across seven locations.
A month later, the Row lost a major retail name too. Nike closed its Santana Row store as part of the restructuring the company announced in April. Mlive reported the closure based on Silicon Valley Business Journal coverage. Collette Navarrette, senior director of marketing for Santana Row's operator Federal Realty, told the Business Journal that "when a tenant's needs change, it gives us the opportunity to refresh the property and bring in new, exciting concepts that reflect where retail and our guests are headed next."
Why the big rooms are still dark
The cost of reopening the empty restaurant spaces explains a lot. The Silicon Valley Business Journal estimated in August that opening a new concept in one of them could take an investment of $8 million to $12 million, shared between landlord and tenant. The same headline said Bacchus and Omakase were in talks about the former Vine spaces. No new tenant has been announced for any of the three.
Flora shows how long the replacement process takes. Eater SF announced it in May as an all-day restaurant and bar at 355 Santana Row in the former Rosie McCann's space. The plan called for California cooking from brunch through dinner, late-night drinks and a 2 a.m. close on weekends, with an opening targeted for late summer 2026. The team behind it has run NOVA Nightclub, Second Story, Wild Rose Eatery and Bar, Water Tower Kitchen and Blush Raw Bar Lounge. As of this month, Flora's own website still says "Opening 2026."
The food that is reaching Santana Row needs much smaller kitchens. Johnny Doughnuts held a grand opening for its Santana Row shop on June 27, selling doughnuts, coffee, soft serve and dirty sodas. Cava has picked the Row for its first Northern California location, but the Mercury News reported it won't open until 2027.
What's filling the Row instead
Taken together, Santana Row is turning into a place to shop for workout gear and clothes, and before long a place to work out. Here's where each space stands as of October 2026:
| Former occupant | What's going in | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Arc'teryx, 356 Santana Row | Hoka, first Bay Area store | Listed as "Coming Soon" |
| Space next to Sezane | Reformation, 2,000+ sq ft | Listed as open |
| Best Buy | Life Time fitness club, 60,000 sq ft | Under development, no date announced |
| Rosie McCann's, 355 Santana Row | Flora restaurant and bar | Announced for 2026 |
| Left Bank, LB Steak, Meso | No tenant announced | Reported talks with Bacchus and Omakase |
| Nike | No replacement named | Closed by mid-July |
Reformation's Santana Row listing said "now open" by mid-September. Life Time is the largest of these projects. The Mercury News reported in January that the club had leased the Best Buy space. Plans include fitness studios, personal training, yoga, Pilates, a cafe, work lounges, a sauna, hot tubs and a kids' academy. That January coverage gave no opening date. When the club opens, it will be the first thing on the Row designed to bring people back several times a week.
Arc'teryx has already completed its move across the boulevard. On Santana Row, Hoka's sign is up, Reformation is open and the Life Time space is still under development. The three large dining rooms are still empty.
November on both sides of the boulevard
The Row's November calendar still pulls a crowd to the street:
- Sunday, Nov. 1: a free Día de Los Muertos Celebration at Santana Row with mariachi, dance, face painting and a cultural market.
- Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 14–15: the Makers Market Local Artist Street Fair on Santana Row.
- Friday, Nov. 27: Christmas in the Park opens downtown at Plaza de César Chávez with the Community Tree Lighting Ceremony, and runs through Jan. 1, 2027.
Across the street, Valley Fair's newest restaurants are already serving. With Chubby Tan and Izumi open since early October, a Saturday in mid-November could include the street fair on Santana Row and a charcoal-grilled beef tongue dinner across Stevens Creek.
Shifts like this one, where a store moves across the street or a dining room sits empty while a gym takes over a former big-box space, affect how a neighborhood feels day to day, and that ends up shaping what nearby homes are worth. If you live near Winchester and Stevens Creek and want to know how these changes might affect your home's value, Nivi Das Team can prepare a design-informed valuation that reflects what's actually opening near you. Get Your Home Valuation.
