A former H&M store at Santana Row in San Jose is getting a second life as corporate office space, with data-resilience giant Veeam Software signing on to take over the second floor while apparel retailers Vuori and Evereve split the ground-floor retail space below. The move comes as San Jose's broader office market struggles with an 18.4 percent vacancy rate, even as Santana Row itself has reached 100 percent office occupancy.
The conversion illustrates how Santana Row's mixed-use format is bucking the wider Silicon Valley slump, according to The Real Deal. H&M closed its two-story Santana Row location in 2024, and the space sat vacant before landlord Federal Realty Investment Trust — which built the entire mixed-use community — found new tenants for both levels. Vuori and Evereve have since opened in the former H&M's first-floor retail footprint, while the second floor has been repurposed as office space, joining other upper-level suites at the property that have already made the same switch.
Veeam's Local Footprint Grows After Acquisition
Veeam, based in Kirkland, Washington, signed a deal to move into the second-floor space, a lease first reported by the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Before acquiring Securiti.ai in 2025, Veeam had employees working remotely across the Silicon Valley region but had no dedicated office presence in the area. Securiti.ai had previously occupied its own office at Santana Row and also occupies space at the neighboring Santana West office building, which Federal Realty developed next to the retail complex.
Rehan Jilil, who was previously president and CEO of Securiti.ai and now serves as Veeam's products and technology president, said the company needs more room for its local employees. Jilil said Santana Row's mix of retail, restaurant and other consumer-facing spaces was part of what drew the company to the location. PNC Bank also leased 11,000 square feet of office space at Santana Row this year, another sign of the property's pull for companies seeking a foothold in the area.
Vacancy Gap Highlights Santana Row's Draw
The numbers underscore just how unusual Santana Row's performance has been. Per Colliers' second-quarter report, San Jose's office vacancy rate stood at 18.4 percent, while overall Silicon Valley office vacancy came in at 14.1 percent. Santana Row, by contrast, has absorbed some of that regional office demand even as an artificial intelligence boom has fueled a broader wave of demand across the Bay Area's commercial and residential sectors.
That demand has coincided with a flurry of residential deal-making at the property. Waterton acquired the 212-unit Misora apartments at Santana Row from Federal Realty for $148.5 million earlier this year, a sale that valued the complex at roughly $700,500 per unit — well above other recent San Jose apartment sales, such as the Fay tower at $327,400 per unit and the Linq complex at $424,000 per unit, according to The Real Deal. Federal Realty had previously sold the 108-unit Levare Apartments to Hines in May 2025 for $73.9 million, or about $684,300 per unit, as part of a $475 million capital recycling initiative detailed by Multi-Housing News.
More Growth on the Way
Federal Realty is now building Lot 12, a $140 million to $148 million six-story development that will add 258 residential units to the district by late 2027. The company's mixed-use office portfolio reached 99 percent leased in its second-quarter 2026 earnings report, a figure that helped push full-year core FFO guidance up to a range of $7.48 to $7.56 per share. Santana West, the 369,000-square-foot office building Federal Realty developed next to Santana Row, reached 100 percent leased status by early 2026.
The City of San Jose is also weighing a longer-term expansion. A revised Notice of Preparation for the Santana Row Master Plan Update, published in February, outlines plans to raise allowed commercial capacity to roughly 2.78 million square feet of office space and add 2,147 new parking spaces across the property's 42.53 acres — a proposal Hoodline detailed earlier this year.
Retail Churn Continues on the Ground Floor
The office conversions are unfolding alongside plenty of turnover at street level. Best Buy departed its Santana Row space in February, Nike announced its own closure in July, and fast-casual chain Cava signed on in August, joining a rotating cast of tenants that has also included Johnny Doughnuts earlier in the year. Santana Row spans 2.5 million square feet and draws more than 8.5 million visitors annually across its more than 50 shops and 30 restaurants, a scale that helps explain why corporate tenants keep circling back even as ground-floor storefronts change hands.
