Santana Row in San Jose is poised to produce its first housing in a decade

SAN JOSE — Santana Row is poised to produce the San Jose neighborhood’s first housing development in a decade, a project that would include hundreds of residential units geared towards younger workers.

A 258-unit apartment complex is slated to sprout on the eastern side of Santana Row, according to executives with Federal Realty Investment Trust, the owner and developer of Santana Row in San Jose.

“We’ve been working on this residential project for a very long time,” said Patrick McMahon, Federal Realty’s senior vice president of development. “We are targeting a groundbreaking in a matter of weeks. It’s the first new residential project at Santana Row in 10 years.”

The new Santana Row housing development would be built at 358 Hatton St., which at present is a surface parking lot for the mixed-use destination neighborhood of shops, restaurants, office buildings, homes, lively gathering areas, a hotel and open spaces.

“It should be a 26-month build,” McMahon said. “We expect to deliver the housing in 2027. This development will consist of rental units. It will be an important ingredient in our neighborhood.”

A new housing development could fare well at Santana Row.

“It adds to the overall ecosystem of Santana Row,” said Collette Navarette, a senior director of marketing with Federal Realty.

The housing development is arriving on the heels of a deal for a residential property at Santana Row recently.

In May 2025, an affiliate of Federal Realty sold a 108-unit apartment complex called Levare, located at Santana Row, for $73.1 million, Santa Clara County property records show.

“The Levare deal was an extremely strong validator, an extremely strong endorsement, for us,” McMahon said.

That dollar amount worked out to a robust $677,000 a unit for the Levare apartment complex, which is in the higher price range for South Bay apartments in recent years.

Plus, Santana Row’s restaurants, shops, hotel facilities, and tech employers could appeal to people thinking of living at the mixed-use destination neighborhood.

“Everything feeds off everything else,” McMahon said. “The offices, the hotel, the stores, restaurants, the housing.”

In a departure from the typical housing development at Santana Row, the units in this project will be smaller in size than the existing homes in the mixed-use neighborhood.

“We will intentionally have a smaller unit size to bring a more balanced offering into the market,” McMahon said. “The majority of the units are one-bedroom and studios.”

This approach could appeal to some of the younger workers who are employed by companies with offices at Santana Row.

“The preponderance of existing units at Santana Row are two- and three-bedroom units, and townhouses,” McMahon said. “We are trying to target a younger demographic that wants to live and work in a fully amenitized and immersive environment.”

Of the 258 residences in the new housing development, 131 are one-bedroom units, 95 are studios and 32 are two-bedroom units, according to Federal Realty.

“We want to appeal to a younger tech worker, and specifically a younger tech worker who is already working at Santana Row,” McMahon. “It’s a younger tech worker who wants to live in an environment where they can get lunch or breakfast or grab a beer and dinner after work with their colleagues.”

Federal Realty officials noted that San Jose experienced no new major apartment starts in 2024 and that so far in 2025, no new apartment projects have launched in San Jose, according to McMahon.

“We are leaning into a very extensive amenity project, both indoors and outdoors,” McMahon said. “This will be the first fully amenitized residential project in the market in three years.”