The Downtown Precise Plan
The plan, condensed.
The official Downtown Precise Plan runs hundreds of pages. This is the condensed version: the same plan, the key facts, five minutes of your time.
Franklin Street, then and now
How it works
The plan does four big things.
Puts the streets back
The old downtown was a grid of small, walkable blocks. Urban renewal wiped that grid off the map. The plan redraws it, restoring 10 city blocks with streets designed for people first: wide sidewalks, slow traffic, and room for outdoor dining.
Writes the rulebook
Instead of arguing over every building for years, the plan sets clear rules up front: how tall buildings can be, how they meet the sidewalk, and what they can be used for. If a project follows the rules, it can move ahead. That's the whole idea.
Mixes homes, shops, and jobs
A downtown only works if people actually live there. The plan calls for homes above storefronts, offices near cafes, and public plazas in between, so the street stays busy in the morning, at lunch, and after dark.
Puts people before cars
Small blocks, wide sidewalks, and everything a short stroll apart. Park once — or arrive on foot, by bike, or by streetcar — and spend the rest of your visit walking, not circling for a spot.
By the numbers
What gets built.
These are the maximums the adopted plan allows on the 25 acres, with what each number means on the ground.
The plan area, bounded by Benton, Lafayette, Homestead, and Madison.
About 19 football fields, right where the old downtown stood.
City blocks recreated by restoring the historic street grid.
The street map your grandparents knew, redrawn.
New residential units allowed under the plan's preferred scenario.
Roughly a thousand households living downtown.
Commercial and retail space: shops, restaurants, and services.
Room for well over a hundred storefronts.
Office space, bringing workers and daytime energy to the district.
Lunch crowds that keep the cafes alive on weekdays.
Public space: plazas, paseos, and places to simply hang out.
The free-to-everyone part. Benches, trees, events.
The economic engine
That's how many jobs the rebuilt downtown is expected to support once the district is built out. Baristas and bookkeepers, chefs and shopkeepers, office teams and the crews who build it all. A downtown isn't just a place to be, it's a place to work.
What it costs you
Rebuilding downtown will never cost residents a cent. Private builders pay for the homes, shops, and offices, and the plan simply sets the rules they build under. Not one tax dollar is needed — now or ever.
The core idea
What exactly is a precise plan?
For most of Santa Clara, development rules are loose, so every new building becomes its own long negotiation.
A precise plan is the city writing very specific rules for one district ahead of time. Where the streets go. How tall buildings can be. What goes on the ground floor. What the sidewalks look like.
Once those rules exist, builders don't have to guess and neighbors don't have to fight every project one by one. Everyone can see the finished picture before the first piece is placed.
Worth being clear about: the plan doesn't build anything by itself, and the city isn't writing the checks. It legalizes the downtown we want, so that when builders show up, the only thing they can build is a real downtown.
The fine print that matters
Why "form-based code" protects what you love.
One phrase in the plan does a lot of quiet work: form-based code. Most zoning only cares what a building is used for and how big it can be. A form-based code instead sets rules for how a building looks and how it meets the street — its materials, its rhythm, the way its ground floor greets the sidewalk. That means the community can hold new development to real aesthetic standards, not just a height limit, and defend the character residents actually care about but rarely realize they're allowed to ask for.
It also keeps the decisions here at home. Because these standards are written down and objective, they hold up even as state housing law strips cities of the case-by-case say they once had — so it's Santa Clara, not Sacramento, that decides what its downtown looks like. And on the question everyone asks first: the code is written so new buildings won't loom over what's already there. New development is designed to stay within the range of existing building heights, using generous setbacks to keep the density comfortable and the street human-scaled.
Common questions
The stuff everyone asks.
On the 25 acres bounded by Benton Street, Lafayette Street, Homestead Road, and Madison Street. That's the footprint of the original downtown, centered on the old Franklin Street.
Not yet. The plan sets the rules; actual buildings come from individual projects that follow those rules. Getting shovels in the ground is the next fight, which is why the movement is still growing.
Private builders, who construct the homes, shops, and offices under the city's rules. Public pieces like streets and plazas come through the city's normal capital and development process. This will never cost residents a cent: no new taxes, not now, not ever.
We want to introduce a streetcar service that becomes the icon of our downtown, and the restored street grid is designed to make it possible. A streetcar isn't guaranteed by the adopted plan, so it's one of the things we keep pushing for.
Protecting existing businesses and residents is one of our five founding principles. We advocate for a build out that brings them along, because a downtown that displaces its own community isn't reclaimed, it's replaced.
Add your name to the movement, show up when projects come before the City Council, and tell your neighbors. Cities listen to rooms full of residents. Visit our Get Involved page for all the ways to help.
Want the unabridged version? The official plan documents live on the City of Santa Clara's website. This page is our community summary, not the legal document.
The one sentence version
If you only remember one thing: Santa Clara approved an official blueprint to rebuild its downtown on the same 25 acres where the old one stood before it was demolished.
Adopted by the Santa Clara City Council · December 5, 2023
Now you know the plan
Help us turn it into a place.
The blueprint is approved. What happens next depends on how many citizens and voters keep showing up.