Urban revitalization - San Mateo

It's amazing to see what a town can do. The city of San Mateo (on the Peninsula, 20 miles south of San Francisco) with a population of some 100,000 had a relatively quiet (read - low pedistrian traffic, little vibrant retail, few entertainment options) downtown. Around 2002 a multi-theater movie theater opened downtown and with increased traffic downtown, rents increased, slow retailers moved out, failing restaurants closed, and a lot of businesses that had been around for decades were gone. While this might seem like a sad story about gentrification, this is all good news. National retailers didn't move in and take over the city, rather new restaurants have opened, new retail stores have gone in, and the city is vibrant as it hadn't been for decades previously.