One of the country’s leading institutional investment groups, Federal Realty came upon a progressive city, San Jose, resulting in the European-inspired, pedestrian-oriented Santana Row.  They even made sure it had a state-of-the-art fiber optic infrastructure.  However, there is little local economic development focus (fundamental to a CoolTown):  no office space, no mixed-income housing, and no emphasis on entrepreneurial/local retail tenants.  However, it’s a great project for what it is, and one can only innovate so much.

Still, municipalities take such a long time figuring out how to approve even this level of innovation (so maybe San Jose isn’t THAT progressive) that Federal Realty has since stated that they’re going back to investing in easily-approved shopping centers with big-name anchors again.