East Dublin

Want to have the prototypical suburban shopping and entertainment experience?

Well, this is the place for it. East Dublin is a fairly typical suburban shopping experience. From movie theaters to outlets, East Dublin has a bit of all of it. Here are some of the stores you can find here in East Dublin: Barnes and Noble, Babies-R-Us, Old Navy, Pier One, Any Mountain and Bed Bath and Beyond.

And here are some of the restaurants: Tomatina, Black Angus, Applebee’s, Five Guys Burgers and On the Border Mexican Food. Pretty much, if it is a mid level chain restaurant, it probably has an outlet here.

As to entertainment , there is the Regal Max 21 which is also an IMax theater. 21 screens of fairly middle of the road entertainment aimed at teens mostly. Right now for example they are playing The Dark Knight Rises, the latest Diary of a Wimpy movie, The Campaign and the latest Bourne Identity movie. Their only nod to something more serious is the Right Wing reactionary film, Obama’s America.

Given the bland, middle of the road food, shopping and entertainment options that I have listed here, as you might expect, it is stuffed to gills with locals every weekend. You could hardly tell that the economy is not booming from being here on a Saturday.

The area is also packed with car dealerships all along the 580 corridor from here to the junction with 680.

East Dublin is not just about popcorn, hamburgers, stonewashed jeans and the latest Grisham novel, however. There are some businesses that make their home here as well. Taleo, the automated talent recruitment company has its headquarters just off the freeway, as does the data management company Sybase. Carl Zeiss MediTec has offices here, and Avaya the communications and collaboration company has an office here as well.
In support of both the companies in Dublin and those in Livermore to the south of Highway 580, East Dublin also has a number of hotels, including a Hyatt and an Extended Stay.

Of course, one of the biggest employers and housing facilities in Dublin are the police services on the northern end of Dublin.
That is where you will find both the highway patrol and the Santa Rita Jail.

Sandwiched in between the shopaholics and the jail birds are loads of model homes, apartments and condos. The model homes on the far northern end of this neighborhood go for close to a million dollars. They are new—built this millennium for the most part—and have that somewhat homogenous look that such modular neighborhoods take. They are still pretty attractive, however.

There are also a lot of condos and apartments close to the freeway. Rents run from about $1400/month for one room apartments on the southern end to $5 K for some of those homes a little bit farther from the freeway. These are pretty nice but not very suitable for kids as the walls are fairly thin.

Overall, I would say that this is the heart of Dublin in the sense of being what Dublin is at its most authentic self—a very commercial, upper middle class city.