Modern but Empty: The Village at San Antonio

I decided to take a quick tour of the new Village at San Antonio in Mountain View. This is a new modern shopping center, with shops, cafes, and even a small park.

Pretty fall colors on these trees decorating the main walkthrough area.

This is what all of Silicon Valley should look like. Everything is well designed, there is a plethora of greenery, everything is fairly differentiated and isn't monotone, and it has a cozy feel to it.

Map layout of the village.

Here is the map of the area: We are observing the green park area in the middle. The area towards Safeway is boring, but everything to the left of the park is brand new.

Cement bollards surrounding the main park area.

These cement balls are called bollards: They are meant to prevent cars from entering the area, either by accident or to park.

Bike Parking

There's a couple of these bike garages surrounding the residential area of the square.

Some more bike locks, with more construction across the street.

It's curious that there really isn't that many of the bike garages, maybe a total of eight across the entire square which definitely is not enough to park all the bikes of the surrounding tenants. It's also not clear how you rent them out. Posting simple instructions on the side would be helpful.

Storefront

You can notice the variety in the architecture. They went with this fresh wood look for this specific section, presumably for a restaurant. All these spaces are empty, of course..

Empty seating area in front of office buildings.

Again, lots of greenery mixed in with this lounge area. It's only missing some fire pits and some people.

Hobo utilizing the quite and comfortable lounge area

We also get to experience our local homeless population here. You would think that the security guards here would do something about it but they walk past and don't bat an eye. Definitely ruins the aesthetic of the place, but a good reminder that this is still the hobo-filled SF Bay Area.

Here you can see a lonely dog park, with the Hyatt hotel in the background.

Here is a dog park filled with, well, just one dog. Maybe it's just not a populated time of day but this entire place seemed like ghost town.

Street lamps along the sidewalk.

Here is the sidewalk going alongside the movie theater. Overall, it's a pleasant place and designed pretty well.

The unfortunate truth about this place is that it lacks people and businesses, depriving it of any value. I came here for the first time purely to check out the architecture, not to visit any store. There has to be a natural flow of people coming in for different reasons, which will have a compound effect of adding foot-traffic and attracting more businesses. The Village should incentivize companies to move into the spaces, maybe by offering some sort of discounted rent initially.

It overall seems that there is a deficit of quality businesses in the area, and this might be pointing at a bigger problem of the offline world in Silicon Valley.