Drive past Union and Camden on any given afternoon and the plaza looks the way it has looked for years. The yellow sign with the carousel on top still turns, sometimes. The parking lot is still mostly empty. A handful of storefronts, tucked into little courtyards with white picket fences and picnic benches, are still open for business. If you've lived in Cambrian Park long enough, you've probably stopped expecting anything to change here.
That read is wrong, and the reason matters more than most people driving past realize. The plaza isn't waiting to see if redevelopment happens. The city already approved a full mixed-use village here four years ago. What's actually being decided right now, in a permit filing sitting in front of San José planning staff, is which half of that approved project gets built first. And the answer to that question may determine whether the second half ever gets built at all.
What's Still There Right Now
The plaza's staying power over the years has come from tenants willing to keep operating through repeated rounds of hearings and redesigns. Jolanta Kobylinski opened Heartbeat Cafe in the plaza back in 1996 and told local reporters she hoped to reopen there once redevelopment finished. A few doors down, jeweler Alfonso de Tagle said he planned to stay at the plaza as long as possible, with hopes of returning after the redesign. Whether either business is still leasing space this year isn't something recent reporting confirms by name, but as of this spring, reporters visiting the site noted that many longtime storefronts were still open for business.
Worth knowing if you're one of the smaller shops on that block: the developer's approval only requires relocation assistance for businesses that have leased space at the plaza since 2015 or earlier. Newer tenants don't get that safety net.
The Village Everyone Signed Off On In 2022
The current plaza, brick storefronts under a covered walkway, dates back to 1953. Weingarten Realty bought the property in 2015, and the development team later moved under the Kimco Realty umbrella. After years of community meetings, the San José City Council unanimously approved a full replacement in 2022. The approved plan would take down the one-story mall and replace it with apartments over ground-floor shops and restaurants, a central plaza, a hotel, an assisted-living building, and a mix of for-sale housing.
The specifics, all approved as one package:
- Roughly 305 apartments, a 229-room hotel, a 110-bed assisted-living center with 50 independent living units, 48 single-family homes, and 25 townhouses
- About four acres of open space, with parking built mostly underground
- A central promenade at Camden and Union, part of an original design from architecture firm Kenneth Rodrigues & Partners that drew on Italian town squares
Residents didn't just ask for more density. They asked for a specific kind of place. Peter Clarke of Friends of Cambrian Park Plaza has said the community was clear it wanted somewhere people would come to linger, with sit-down dining rather than more fast food, closer in spirit to The Pruneyard in Campbell or downtown Los Gatos. That's the deal the city signed off on: housing and hotel rooms, yes, but built alongside the kind of commercial space that gives a neighborhood a center.
The Sign Isn't Going Anywhere
If you've wondered whether the carousel survives any of this, it does. The sign was built in 1953 along with the shopping center and received historic status in 2016. Under the approved plan, the sign gets relocated to Union Avenue, positioned between the new apartments and a senior residence. Whatever else happens on that corner, the landmark stays a landmark.
What Changed This Spring
Here's the part that hasn't made it into the version of this story most people already know. In February 2026, Weingarten Nostat, Inc., with Kimco listed as the applicant, filed a Planned Development Permit Amendment, File No. PDA20-007-01. The ask isn't to change what gets built. It's to change the order.
The developer wants to build the housing portions of the project first and extend the entitlements by up to four years, a request the city is currently reviewing. The permit for the current Cambrian Park Signature Project is set to expire in 2028, which is part of why the timeline extension is on the table at all.
The reasoning behind the request isn't a mystery. "The plan that you can look through on the city's website is not economically feasible to build," Kelly Snider, a development consultant and San José State professor, told KQED. Rising interest rates, higher construction costs, and shifting retail habits have stalled or reshaped large mixed-use projects across the Bay Area, and Cambrian Park is caught in that same squeeze. This isn't a Cambrian Park problem specifically. It's a Bay Area development problem that happens to be sitting on Cambrian Park's most visible corner.
Why The Order Matters More Than The Delay
A four-year extension sounds like an administrative footnote. It isn't, and the reason is about what tends to happen once housing gets built on land that was supposed to hold both housing and retail.
"Once you put up housing on any piece of commercial land, it's never going to be commercial again."
That's Peter Clarke's assessment, and it's not a sentimental objection. Once housing goes up on commercial land, the neighbors' hope for a genuine gathering spot along the lines of the Pruneyard tends not to materialize. Apartments and townhomes get built, sold or leased, and the developer has recovered the investment that made the deal pencil out. The retail phase, the part that needs tenants willing to sign leases before the neighborhood around them exists, becomes optional in a way it currently isn't.
Here's the plain version of what's at stake:
| What was approved in 2022 | What's uncertain under the 2026 request |
|---|---|
| Housing, hotel, and retail built as one connected village | Housing goes first; retail and hotel follow later, if at all |
| A four-acre plaza and promenade at Camden and Union | The plaza's completion is now tied to a permit that could run four more years |
| Sit-down restaurants residents specifically asked for | No commercial tenant has signed on while that phase stays unbuilt |
None of this means the retail never comes. It means the built-in leverage that used to force it, the requirement that everything rise together, is exactly what's being asked to change.
What You'll Actually Notice
If you live nearby, the honest short-term answer is: not much, yet. Reporting from this spring found the plaza still quietly doing business, with longtime storefronts open even as the project's future stayed unresolved. If the amendment is approved, expect the earliest visible change to be housing construction on part of the site, not a new restaurant row or a finished promenade.
The longer answer is worth watching. When the annexation was approved back in 2022, District 9 Councilmember Pam Foley described her hope for a place families could walk to and meet friends without driving to the Pruneyard, Los Gatos, or Willow Glen. That's still the plan on paper. Whether it's still the plan in practice depends on a decision the city hasn't made yet, and one most residents haven't heard is even up for debate.
If you want to track it yourself, the city's project file for the amendment is listed under File No. PDA20-007-01 through San José's planning division, and it's worth a look before your next trip past that carousel sign.
Cambrian Park has been waiting on this corner for a while now, and the wait is about to get more specific. Elsa Garza keeps an eye on exactly this kind of local shift, not because it changes what your house is worth this week, but because it eventually will. If you're curious how a project like this could affect your street down the line, or you just want a straight answer whenever you're ready to talk about your home's value, reach out any time.
