Downtown Dublin Is Still Waiting on Its Town Square. On Friday Nights, St. Pat's Row Stands In.

Downtown Dublin has had a plan for a one-acre town square since 2019, and the square hasn't been built. For four Friday nights this fall, a two-block stretch of St. Patrick Way closed to cars and filled with food vendors, live music and artisan tables. The last of those nights is Friday, Nov. 13, from 5 to 9 p.m.

The street was built for exactly this. The city's planning documents call it the place where downtown's gathering space is supposed to grow, and the Night Market is the first regular event that uses it that way.

A street built ahead of its square

St. Pat's Row is the city's name for the St. Patrick Way extension between Golden Gate Drive and Regional Street. In its two-year strategic plan update for July 2022 through June 2024, the City of Dublin reported the extension complete and open to people walking, biking and driving.

The same report explains the long wall of art on the north side of the street. The city and AvalonBay completed a public art piece nearly 400 feet long beside the extension. The city wrote that it "creates a sense of place in a future civic gathering space downtown" and screens the back of a large retail center.

So the city treated this block as a future civic gathering space before anyone set up a vendor tent there. The Night Market is the space working as designed, years before the buildings meant to surround it.

The art wall is made for evening hours

The artwork is called Acrossroadsacross, by artist Norie Sato. It dates to 2023. Sato describes it as inspired by Dublin's position as a crossroads in the Bay Area and by the idea of threes: community, connections, centers. It also draws on trifolium leaves and flowers, the clover family, and the way their leaves attach to stems.

Up close, the piece breaks down like this:

• The wall: 400 feet long and 10 feet tall, built from 133 panels between 5 and 7 feet tall.
• The columns: 11 of them, each 12 inches in diameter and 8 feet tall.
• The "Clover" lights: three sculptures, each 3 feet by 3 feet by 3 feet, mounted on 18-foot poles, in three different designs.
• The materials: painted and perforated aluminum, steel, acrylic and LED lights.
• The makers: fabricated by A. Zahner Company and Dimensional Innovations, commissioned by Avalon West Dublin GP, with Dorka Keehn of Keehn on Art as public art consultant.

Some of the panels are backlit, and the perforations cast shadows on the surface behind them. Sato's own photos of the piece include twilight shots, a night view of the lit columns and a close-up of one of the clover lights. The market runs 5 to 9 p.m., so most of it happens under the lights the piece was built around.

From three nights to four

The market is in its second fall. In 2025, The Independent reported that Dublin was recruiting vendors for three Friday night markets on St. Pat's Row, with local entertainment, artisans and food trucks. This year the city added a fourth night. A city newsletter said the market was returning after a strong response in its first year.

The extra night came from starting about a month earlier, while the finale moved up a week from last year's Nov. 21. Patch described the 2026 series as including live entertainment, cultural performances, family-friendly activities and games, outdoor dining and an artisan craft market. The city took applications from food vendors and general vendors separately.

The square on paper is still on paper

The Night Market matters more because of what hasn't been built yet. In a cover story on downtown Dublin from Oct. 23, 2025, Pleasanton Weekly laid out the history. The City Council approved the Downtown Dublin Preferred Vision in November 2019. Its three main ideas are a one-acre town square, a new grid of walkable blocks, and "downtown character" defined by mixed-use development. When the vision was approved, the city hoped to have the town square and the development around it within five years.

The project expected to deliver that square was Dublin Commons, at the Dublin Place shopping center, 7200 Amador Plaza Road. Property owner American Realty Advisors, working with Hines, proposed up to 1,510 apartments, 535,000 square feet of life science research and development space, up to 275,000 square feet of retail and a new town square. At the applicant's request, the Council hearing set for Oct. 1, 2024 was postponed to an undetermined date. As of that October 2025 report, city staff and the owner were working on a revised plan. Deputy City Manager Hazel Wetherford said no Council action was expected yet and it was not known when construction would begin.

Wetherford put the gap plainly in her interview with Pleasanton Weekly:

"We have a downtown. What we don't have is a main street experience that you see in neighboring communities, like in Livermore and in Pleasanton."

She told the paper that in her 14 years with the city, that is the one thing she has constantly heard from the community. Her explanation of the history is that Dublin never had a railroad stop, and railroad stops are what often grew into main streets with hotels, restaurants and markets.

In the same story, Inge Houston, president and CEO of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, explained how this kind of change actually happens: "We can all say, 'We want this.' But a developer is going to come in and say, 'But we're willing to build this. This is what we want to invest our money in.'"

The finished street changes that equation in one way. The Night Market didn't need a developer. It needed a street that could be closed, a wall of lights and a vendor application, and the city already had all three.

What stands around the closed street

The blocks around St. Pat's Row are still mostly what Mayor Sherry Hu called a regional retail hub. In the Pleasanton Weekly story, she described the area as largely built around car access and big-box retail. As of that October 2025 reporting, the retail district held two centers:

• Dublin Place, with Target, PetSmart, Chipotle, Panera Bread and Yafa Hummus.
• Dublin Plaza, with CVS, Daiso and Fitness 19.

The same report listed empty storefronts in Dublin Place that had once held Lucille's Smokehouse BBQ, Toys "R" Us, Burlington, Coco's Bakery Restaurant and Hobby Lobby. Spirit Halloween was temporarily using the former Hobby Lobby space. Pleasanton Weekly had reported in August 2025 that Burlington would close on Aug. 29 of that year after selling its building. American Realty Advisors later bought that building and became the sole owner of the center.

A separate project in the same center, Dublin Place North, was approved by the Council in August 2024. It calls for a new 33,125-square-foot building at the northeastern corner of the center, meant to house existing tenants including PetSmart, Panera Bread, Chipotle, BMO Bank and Yafa Hummus. The applicant described it as the "critical first step" toward the downtown vision.

A few blocks east, on Village Parkway, sits the downtown some longtime locals remember. Local historian Steve Minniear told Pleasanton Weekly that the stretch of Village Parkway from Amador Valley Boulevard to Dublin Boulevard worked as a semi-modern downtown in the 1980s and '90s. Dublin Vacuum and Three Sheets Craft Beer Bar, both quoted in that story, are part of that older commercial strip. For more on where the city's newer restaurants have been opening, see our look at why Dublin's new restaurants keep landing in the same three places.

Friday, Nov. 13: the practical part

1. Time and place. 5 to 9 p.m. on St. Pat's Row, which the city lists as St. Patrick Way between Golden Gate Drive and Regional Street. Details are on the city's Night Market page.
2. Getting there. The city says street parking downtown will be limited during the market. West Dublin/Pleasanton BART is about a five-minute walk from St. Pat's Row.
3. What's there. Food vendors, handmade goods and live music, per the city's event listing.
4. The wall. Walk the north side of the street to see Acrossroadsacross lit up, including the three clover lights on their 18-foot poles.
5. The rest of the season. Nov. 13 is the last market of 2026. The city's December calendar includes the Holiday DancEscsape at the Dublin Senior Center, 7600 Amador Valley Blvd., on Dec. 4 from 6 to 9 p.m., and the Golden Follies Holiday Performance there on Dec. 19 from 1 to 4 p.m. Our Dublin neighborhood page has more on life around the city.

At Dixit Properties, we follow how Dublin's downtown changes block by block, from the art wall on St. Patrick Way to what comes next at Dublin Place. If you want to talk about what downtown's progress means for your home, or you just want to compare notes after the market, request a free consultation and Vik will get back to you directly.