Kora's Unheated Yoga in Bala Yoga's Old Fremont Room

Kora Moved Into a Stone Way Room Already Built for Yoga

The room was already a yoga room. Danica Koos took the southwest corner of the ground floor at 3636 Stone Way N in Fremont and named what she put there Kora, after a Tibetan Buddhist practice of walking a circuit around a sacred place. Kora is unheated. The studio's own Instagram account posted on August 28 that all inspections had passed and gave opening day as August 29, 2026. The city file says the rest. Kora's build-out permit, record 7128389-CN, sits directly linked to an earlier permit for the same corner of the same building, and the tenant named on that earlier record is BALA YOGA. Bala Yoga's Fremont studio is closed. What went in instead is a narrow idea about temperature: no added heat, classes deliberately sized, mats and props laid out before anyone arrives. The permit covering all of it records no change of use and no change of occupancy.

Bala Yoga's 2015 Filing Turned a Retail Bay Into Recreation

The before is in the same file. On June 5, 2015, an application landed for that identical southwest corner, and what it asked for was a change of use: retail out, indoor participant sports and recreation in. Indoor participant sports and recreation is the city's category for a room people move in, and it is not the category a shop sits in. The city issued it on August 4. Declared valuation, $50,000. The certificate of occupancy followed on October 22, a little over four months from application to occupancy, and the tenant named on the record is BALA YOGA. Two things in that document matter later. The first is the floor area, given as 2,367 square feet for the first-floor southwest corner. The second is the street number, 3636 Stone Way N, which is what the city writes on both permits and not what the current tenant writes for itself. A retail bay on Stone Way became a yoga room for a declared $50,000. When it stopped being one, the record does not say.

What Kora's 2026 File Actually Approves

Kora's paperwork opens on March 4, 2026 and describes the work in one flat sentence: construct tenant improvements for Yoga Studio (Kora Collective) at south west corner on the ground floor of existing commercial building, per plans. The city issued it on April 1. Declared valuation is $85,000, which is the number an applicant states for permitting and not an audited account of what the build cost, and the floor area claimed on Level 1 is 1,440 square feet. The classification is the closest the file comes to describing the room: Other B Occupancy, yoga studio, fewer than fifty occupants, in a Type VA building. Fifty is a code band, not a mat count. It is also the only number in either file that gestures at how many people the room holds. Nothing moves in the building envelope. There is no change of use, no change of occupancy and no certificate of occupancy required, because the corner has held one since 2015. On paper this is a yoga studio replacing a yoga studio, and the only thing the city was asked to approve was the inside of the room. Status now reads Completed, inspections completed September 1, 2026, and the file expires October 1, 2027.

The 927 Square Feet Between the Two Records

Line the two records up and they disagree about the size of the room. Bala Yoga's 2015 permit puts 2,367 square feet in the first-floor southwest corner. Kora's 2026 permit puts 1,440 square feet on Level 1 of the same corner of the same building. Two city documents describing one address sit 927 square feet apart, and neither of them explains why. The street numbers do not match either. Both permits are written against 3636 Stone Way N, while Kora gives its own address as 3624 Stone Way N, on its homepage and in its FAQ. Then the inspection dates. Kora's Instagram said on August 28 that all inspections had passed; the city record stamps them completed on September 1. Four days is nothing. It is still two answers to one question, and both of them are on the record.

No Added Heat, and a Door That Closes at the Start Time

What Kora says about itself is short, and most of it is about temperature. Classes run without added heat. They are sized rather than filled. Mats and props are set out in advance instead of carried in. The house rules are firmer than the pitch. Students are asked to arrive fifteen minutes early, and the doors close at the scheduled start with no late entry, which makes those fifteen minutes less a courtesy than the actual arrival time. Cancelling inside two hours costs $12, and not turning up at all costs $15. A membership can be cancelled at any time by email, with fourteen days' notice before the next billing date, and the fees do not come back. Kora points arriving students at the free two-hour street parking along Stone Way and locates itself across from Sea Wolf Bakers. In the fifteen minutes before a class, that free parking and that closing door are the same problem.

There Is No Price on the Public Site

Kora's schedule page asks for an account before it will show a single class, and booking runs through Mariana Tek, with a branded Kora app on Google Play under the package name com.marianatek.thekoracollective. Rates sit behind that same login, along with class times and hours. The public site carries no price. The homepage is running a Now Open line and older copy saying the studio is arriving in Fremont in summer 2026. The team page lists Danica Koos and sixteen more names, teachers and staff, including a studio coordinator and a sound healer, which is a lot of people for 1,440 square feet. The Instagram account had 561 followers on September 3. It had promoted a founding membership on August 13 and again on August 17, an offer that closed on August 22, a week before the doors opened, and what that membership cost is not published either. So the public record of the Fremont yoga room is two permits, a cancellation fee and a login screen. Somebody has to make an account to find out when the classes are.