Downtown Sunnyvale's transformation from parking lot to vibrant hub
Saturday morning on Sunnyvale’s historic Murphy Avenue starts early and doesn’t stop.
Crimson tomatoes, perfectly-ripe strawberries and freshly baked pastries call out to the city’s early risers, who peruse the weekly Farmer’s Market with a steaming cup of coffee in hand before heading to a yoga class at YogaSix or brunch at Keke’s Breakfast Cafe, where the regulars swear the food is worth the sometimes-very-long wait.
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Those who prefer a slower start to their weekend can be spotted catching a midday cup of coffee or bubble tea from one of the many cafes ensconced in the downtown district, or grabbing a bite at one of several al fresco dining spots on the pedestrian-only avenue, which was permanently closed to vehicles in February of 2023.
But downtown Sunnyvale really comes alive once the sun begins to set, with a vast array of bars, nightclubs and late-night dining peppered throughout the city’s streets.
On Murphy Avenue, regulars crowd the charming Irish pub Fibbar MaGees for pints and traditional Irish food or grab a strong cocktail and a game of pool next door at Paul & Harvey — a dive-bar fixture in the area since 1937.
Also hopping are Fuego, a sports bar that transforms into a nightclub in the evening with live music, and Pure, which often gets a line stretching from one end of Murphy Avenue to the other for its line-up of famous DJs and performers.
Once the bars serve their last drink and the shows end, the late-night crowd stumbles out, limbs heavy and heels often in hand, to the smell of steaming onions, peppers and grilled meat at taco stands and hot-dog carts before wandering back to the many new apartment buildings towering over the downtown streets.
This explosion of life in what just 10 years ago was a fairly quiet community nestled amid big tech and aerospace companies is largely because of Cityline Sunnyvale, a dynamic mixed-use development project in downtown Sunnyvale that has transformed the downtown streets with modern apartments, offices, restaurants and retail.
“For years and years, it was just a parking lot,” said Heather Howard, who has worked for Fibbar MaGees since it opened in 1994, of Sunnyvale’s downtown. She now works as the controller for Fibbar’s and its sister bar Molly MaGees in Mountain View. “It kind of felt like a neglected area…it wasn’t really a vibrant place you go visit.”
In the late 1980s and ’90s, the downtown area was primarily a mall called Sunnyvale Town Center, explained Josh Rupert, the director of development at Hunter Properties who led the Cityline project. Over the course of nearly two decades, several developers attempted to revamp the downtown area into a dynamic mixed-use center — the mall was torn down in 2007 and some offices and residential units were constructed. But the project was largely in a state of disarray, he said, when Cityline acquired it in 2016, nearly a decade after progress on the development had halted.
“It was very complicated, frankly, at that time to sort of restart the project some eight years later,” Rupert said. “It required a lot of diligence on our side.”
Cityline constructed nearly 200 residential units, over 100,000 square feet of retail space and about $25 million in site improvements within the first few years of the multi-stage project, Rupert said. Then came more residential units, the AMC movie theater and the Whole Foods grocery store — right when the pandemic shut down all business in 2020.
But within a couple of years, construction was finished on additional office and retail space, as well as nearly 500 apartment units in the Martin, a luxury apartment complex that opened in 2024. Shake Shack, the popular fast food joint, opened up underneath the Martin earlier this month, with lines stretching down the street, Rupert said.
“The opportunity to redevelop a downtown in any location is unique,” Rupert said. “We wanted a mixed-use environment that was dynamic at all hours of the day. We wanted to have offices that support retail and we wanted to have retail that supports the residential.”
While other downtown areas in the Bay Area have experienced a slow recovery from the pandemic, downtown Sunnyvale seems to have fast-tracked its growth.
Other recent additions include the Palo Alto Pakistani-Indian restaurant Zareen’s, while Databricks is expected to move into the downtown offices in late 2026, joining CrowdStrike and Nokia.
Kristina Kawczynski, 39, has been a Sunnyvale resident her whole life and has lived at the Martin apartment complex since it opened in August 2024. She said Cityline has transformed the city and offered something she’s never experienced — the chance to live in the heart of a bustling downtown area with nearly everything within reach.
“It’s ever-changing and I love that about downtown,” she said. “There’s always something going on.”
Kawczynski said downtown Sunnyvale is unique primarily because of its layout — instead of just a singular, long “main” street, the downtown area is more of a “square” of neighboring streets.
“When you go from Murphy Avenue and you’re having to go to a movie at AMC, you’re passing by the brand new office buildings, the Martin, the Redwood Square,” she said. “You’re seeing a transition from an older downtown into a newer downtown. And just knowing that it’s all combined together is really unique in comparison to quite a few other downtowns.”
She said downtown Sunnyvale’s strong sense of community between residents, business owners and the city’s leadership is another part of its appeal.
“It’s definitely kind of a camaraderie down here,” she said. “Walking around downtown, I see a lot of very familiar faces. Some of the coffee shops and businesses that I frequent not only recognize me, but (also) some of the people that I’ve brought with to dinner. A lot of businesses also tend to look out for each other.”
Widely considered the birthplace of the commercial video game industry, Sunnyvale is still a hub for innovation and technology, with the headquarters for Lockheed Martin, Apple, Google, Meta and LinkedIn located throughout the city. Many of those companies’ employees call downtown Sunnyvale home.
Heather Gerloch, founder of the marketing firm MDR Consulting with Cityline, said nearly half of the city’s population comes from overseas, with many foreign workers dealing with culture shock and the challenges of connecting with others while working long hours.
Cityline’s goal, Gerloch said, was to create an opportunity for residents to connect, discover new businesses and feel at home.
“My goal is really to create community,” Gerloch said. “We want to create a destination where people want to be.”
Gerloch said that in 2025, Cityline hosted 41 events downtown, including 13 festivals, with over 150,000 attendees. They included everything from car and craft shows to art and fitness classes to singles events, music series and vintage markets.
Ethan Zhu, 37, leads data science and analytics for DoorDash and moved to Sunnyvale in 2023. A Bay Area resident since 2007, he said Sunnyvale has a unique downtown compared to other cities in the South Bay.
“It’s very convenient and it has all these shops, supermarkets and movie theaters within walking distance,” Zhu said.
He said he loves attending the events in downtown Sunnyvale, which offer him a chance to try new food, explore downtown businesses and meet people.
“You just bump into people,” Zhu said. “I actually reconnected with some people while we were waiting in the same line at one of the food stalls.”
While she’s happy to see Sunnyvale thrive, Howard said she also knows that many of Fibbar MaGee’s longtime regulars have been priced out of the downtown area, as housing costs continue to rise. Walkability is an essential part of Sunnyvale’s vibrancy, she said, but very few of those regulars live within walking distance of the downtown area now.
However, she remains hopeful that downtown Sunnyvale will continue to thrive for years to come.
“I have hopes that the entire area will stay successful, but I think we’re still going to see some turnover,” she said. “At it’s best, there’s no place I’d rather be.”
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This story was originally published June 23, 2026 at 5:14 AM.