 12 Things We're Looking Forward To In 2024:
To ring in the new year, here are some things we are excited to see come to fruition in 2024:
 1. Fremont Bank Downtown HQ Opening
Fremont Bank is putting the finishing touches on its new 6-story headquarters in Downtown, showcasing a state-of-the-art design with features like electrochromic glass, a rooftop terrace and bar, and vertical LED lights. Once operational, the building will punctuate the entrance to Downtown Fremont and stand as a testament to Fremont Bank’s commitment to the community.
 2. Restaurant Week is Coming Back!
The City and Fremont Chamber are incredibly excited to celebrate Fremont’s diverse culinary scene this spring with our 2nd Annual Fremont Restaurant Week! From March 22-31, 2024 – Restaurant Week is your chance to support local Fremont businesses while enjoying exclusive specials and discovering new restaurants! Be sure to visit the official Fremont Restaurant Week webpage and subscribe to the newsletter for the latest updates.
We are thrilled to start 2024 with the grand opening of some incredible eateries in Downtown Fremont along Capitol Avenue! This includes Honest Restaurant, an internationally acclaimed restaurant hailing from Ahmedabad, India, renowned for its fresh “Indian street food”-inspired cuisine, and Din Ding Dumpling House, recently bestowed the honor of Best Soup Dumplings in the Bay Area by the SF Chronicle! Both restaurants are expected to open their doors in January to hungry foodies. Meanwhile, Fremont Food Hall, a diverse haven featuring an array of cuisines, coffee, and goods is underway with construction, and leasing activity continues in Downtown with the few remaining available spaces.
With the opening of new restaurants and the recently launched Fremont Bank, plus the presence of established retailers and a surge in events at the Downtown Event Center, downtown is increasingly becoming a vibrant and bustling place to be!
This March, our Economic Development Team is partnering with the California Energy Commission to host CA Battery Day. Taking place at Fremont’s Downtown Event Center, Battery Day is an opportunity to highlight the latest developments in California’s robust battery technology industry and its role in the clean energy transition.
Spurred by investor appetite, growing environmental awareness, and the Inflation Reduction Act, Fremont is seeing a tidal wave of new expansions and investments in the cleantech sector. As cleantech grows as an industry, Fremont provides the right mix of flexible industrial buildings, a robust manufacturing ecosystem of suppliers, and regulatory expertise to welcome Silicon Valley’s most innovative cleantech companies looking to bring their products to the market.
Every year, the first Friday of October marks National Manufacturing Day, an initiative to inspire the next generation of advanced manufacturing workforce. Given the anticipated growth and reshoring of manufacturing jobs with the CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act, Fremont is proud to bring together local industry and school partners to shed light on the wide range of fulfilling career paths that students can pursue in our semiconductor, biotech, cleantech, robotics, autotech, and now—artificial intelligence—industries. Last year’s Fremont Manufacturing Week consisted of 13 tours for over 350 students from Ohlone College, FUSD, and CSU East Bay at leading companies including Tesla, Boehringer Ingelheim, Nextracker, and Quanta Manufacturing. This year marks Fremont’s 13th Annual Manufacturing Week, and we will look to go bigger than ever and continue the tradition of inspiring tomorrow’s leaders.
In what will likely be the biggest development in Fremont to break ground in 2024, Hines is set to lead the redevelopment of the Dixon Landing Research Park. In December, Hines and its capital partner Oaktree secured a construction loan for the project, paving the way for Hines to begin work on a new 267,000 sq. ft. Class A advanced manufacturing facility, highlighting the demand for such properties in Fremont's nationally leading industrial market. CBRE is overseeing leasing for the project, which has already seen strong tenant interest. We look forward to seeing this project go vertical and seeing which company will ultimately call it home.
 7. AI Accelerates Manufacturing Investments in Fremont
While certain industries may be experiencing softening, others—including artificial intelligence—look to provide a boon to Fremont’s industrial market. AI technology is often thought about in terms of software applications, but these applications require immense processing power, and much of the hardware that enables these applications have a connection to Fremont.
One longstanding Fremont company, Quanta Manufacturing Fremont, a division of Taiwan-based Quanta Computer, has been growing expeditiously, and last year leased its 6th and 7th Fremont facilities to support its rapid expansion into the high-performance AI server market. With AI hardware companies like Quanta leading the way, Fremont’s advanced manufacturing sector is poised to continue its strong momentum into 2024.
Fremont’s Ohlone College is already a national leading in developing industry-driven educational workforce programs. This includes is National Science Foundation internship program, its biotechnology program that boasts an impressive list of leading life sciences corporate sponsors, its Earn and Learn program that places students in an accelerated paid training with guaranteed job placement upon completion, and the Manufacturing Development Program, an innovative partnership with Tesla where students and current Tesla employees get paid to go to school.
Looking ahead, Ohlone has exciting work underway to play an important role in supporting workforce mandates associated with the CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act, two colossal economic stimulus programs poised to accelerate American competitiveness in semiconductor manufacturing and clean technology deployment. More announcements to come!
 9. 880 Tech Center Completion
National developers Scannell Properties and Ares Management have teamed up to deliver the 880 Tech Center, transforming a long-blighted site near Stevenson and Albrae into a 395K square foot Class A industrial campus. The project represents an adaptative land use change approved in 2022 by the City Council from regional commercial to tech industrial, underscoring the resiliency of Fremont’s economy—and in particular its industrial base—in the face of macro shifts in commerce that have accelerated since the pandemic. Once completed in the second half of 2024, the three-building campus will provide hundreds of new jobs and space for new and existing Fremont businesses looking to expand.
On Thursday, February 1st Fremont’s Mayor Mei will join the Mayors of San Jose, Santa Clara, and Sunnyvale for the Silicon Valley Business Journal’s Mayoral Economic Forecast. While the national economy has been caught between negative sentiment and surprisingly resilient economic data, much of the attention is looking to Silicon Valley and the technologies being developed in our backyard. We hope to see you there!
Less than two years after Fremont adopted its Fiber Optic Master Plan, there are already several projects in the pipeline that are poised to meaningfully expand the City’s municipal fiber network. Most notably, the City has received two separate funding grants to support the build-out of fiber and free, high-speed wi-fi nodes throughout Fremont’s historic districts, Downtown, and parts of the City Center area. Underground fiber installation is slated to begin in early 2024, followed by installation of wi-fi mesh networks that will bring free high-speed internet to much of the community. The City continues to explore opportunities to advance the buildout of a comprehensive municipal fiber network for the benefit of residents and businesses.
 12. Fremont’s First Engineering Expo
The engineering/maker community in Fremont is alive and well! In collaboration with Fremont Unified and local partners, this year we are organizing the first ever Engineering Expo in Fremont. This event will showcase student-engineered technology projects, feature local culinary delights, and highlight the talents of Fremont-based craft makers, including dozens of home-based businesses. Representatives from Fremont’s advanced manufacturing companies will also join in the fun. Stay tuned for more details!
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