Drive north on Lafayette Street past the stadium on a Tuesday night and you will see lit windows in buildings that did not exist three years ago, a parking lot with string lights and a taco trailer, and beyond that, a block of raw dirt with a chain-link fence around it. All three of those things are part of the same neighborhood plan. None of them are finished, and one of them, the part that looks the most finished, was never meant to last.
That is the part worth understanding if you already live in Santa Clara and have spent two years wondering what is actually going on back there.
Forty-Five Acres, One Plan, About a Dozen Different Clocks
The official name is the Tasman East Specific Plan, adopted by the Santa Clara City Council in November 2018. It covers roughly 45 acres of former industrial land bounded by Tasman Drive, the Guadalupe River, the Santa Clara golf course, and Lafayette Street, a quarter mile from Levi's Stadium. The plan allows for up to 4,500 homes, with developers already seeking city approval for 1,500 more on top of that. A Pinyon Group principal working on one of the affordable housing pieces put the eventual scale at over 6,000 units and something close to 10,000 residents once the whole thing is built out.
That number matters because almost none of it exists yet as a place you can walk through. What exists is a scattering of finished buildings inside a much larger footprint of approved plans, financing paperwork, and vacant parcels. Locals sometimes hear this called the Clara District, which is the branding one developer, Ensemble Investments, uses for its own six projects inside the larger plan. Tasman East is the city's name for the whole area. Both refer to the same dirt.
What You Can Actually Walk Into Tonight
If you go looking for the parts that are open right now, there are fewer than you would guess given how long the cranes have been up.
Clara's Junction sits at the gateway of the district on Tasman Drive, in a building that used to be a Carl's Jr. Developers gutted it and turned the site into an indoor-outdoor food and beverage garden with a New American bar and grill, a taco trailer called Taz's Tacos, and a live barbecue pit that hosts rotating guest pitmasters. It was built as a joint venture between Ensemble and Apicii, the hospitality group behind the Seattle Mariners' ballpark bar Hatback.
Next door, AVE Santa Clara opened in early 2025 as an eight-story, 311-unit apartment building with about 15,000 square feet of ground-floor retail. Its planned anchor tenant is the newest addition to the district's food scene: a full-service Italian steakhouse from the team behind Saratoga's Hero Ranch Kitchen, which developers announced would open ahead of Super Bowl LX this past February, aiming to give the district its first true sit-down dining room rather than a trailer or a grill pit.
That is close to the entire list of what functions today as a place to eat, drink, or gather in this 45-acre plan. A 151-unit affordable housing tower called Mainline North opened at 2310 Calle Del Mundo in January 2026, but it is residential only. It adds neighbors, not storefronts.
Built to Be Torn Down
Here is the detail that changes how you should look at Clara's Junction the next time you are there with a plate of tacos: it was designed, on purpose, not to last.
An Ensemble vice president explained the thinking to a reporter around the time the district's timelines accelerated. The goal was to activate the site with something people would actually use, without spending so much on the buildout that tearing it down in five or ten years to make room for more housing would sting. The taco trailer, the BBQ pit, the string lights strung over a converted fast food restaurant, none of it is a long-term bet. It is a placeholder that happens to serve good food while it waits its turn to become an apartment building.
That reframes the whole district. The parts that feel most like an established neighborhood right now, the parts with a happy hour crowd and a line for brisket, are the least permanent parts of the plan. The buildings that will still be standing in fifteen years are the eight-story apartment towers, which right now offer no reason for anyone outside their own leasing office to visit.
The Lots That Are Still Just Lots
Walk a few blocks further and the story changes again, this time to paperwork rather than tacos.
A 301-unit mid-rise at 2263 to 2303 Calle Del Mundo, proposed by Ensemble and Rethink Development, secured a roughly $150 million construction loan from Bank of America in March 2026. That loan clears a major financing hurdle, but as of that filing the project still needed building permits and a contractor before anything could break ground. The two parcels it sits on changed hands for roughly $15 million combined back in 2019 and 2021, and as of that same filing they still functioned as vacant land next to active construction, waiting on the next step.
A few blocks over, the Santa Clara City Council approved a tentative map for a 198-unit, 21-floor condominium tower at 5185 Lafayette Street. Approval is not construction, and the site is one of several in the district where paperwork has outpaced any pouring of a foundation.
And across Lafayette Street sits Related Santa Clara, a separate 240-acre project with plans for roughly a thousand more homes plus retail. As of a spring 2025 report, the project had gone more than a year without a public update, after developers filed plans to convert a large share of its planned office space into light industrial use instead, a sign that even the biggest piece of this puzzle was still being redrawn rather than built.
None of this means the plan has stalled. Related California's own towers, The Clara and the senior housing project Ellore, opened on the other side of the district with 508 and 176 units respectively. It means the neighborhood is arriving in overlapping waves, some already lived in, some financed but unbroken, some still being redesigned on paper.
Two Different Santa Claras, Same Weekend
This particular weekend makes the contrast easy to see in person. The Santa Clara Art & Wine Festival runs September 19 and 20 at Central Park, a few miles from Tasman East, with live music, food vendors, and beer and wine tastings drawing a crowd that has nothing to do with the stadium district. On the same Saturday, the San Jose Earthquakes host LAFC at Levi's Stadium, and the next day the 49ers open their home season against the Miami Dolphins. Tens of thousands of people will pass within a few blocks of Clara's Junction and never know it exists, because their entire trip runs from parking lot to gate and back.
That is the honest state of this new neighborhood in September 2026. It has real restaurants, a real bar, real neighbors moving into real apartments, and it still shares its ZIP code with vacant lots, unbroken construction loans, and a placeholder food hall that its own developer describes as a rental, not a fixture. If you already live in Santa Clara, the next time you are near the stadium on a non-game night, it is worth the walk. Just do not get too attached to the taco trailer. By design, it is not planning to stay.
If you are curious about how a fast-changing pocket like this affects home values or timing nearby, Clara Lee can walk you through what's actually happening on the ground, not just what the renderings promise. Get a free home valuation to see where your Santa Clara property stands today.
