SummerHill Locks In 6.3 Acres for 616 North San Jose Apartments

Del Rey Investment Co. signed a contract to sell SummerHill Apartment Communities two empty parcels at Baypointe Parkway and Zanker Road: 3.7 acres at 240 Baypointe and 2.6 acres at 255 Baypointe. Closing deadlines in the county files run to late July 2028 for the larger lot and late July 2029 for the smaller one. The price stayed off the record.

If the city signs off, SummerHill would put 315 apartments in a six-story building at 240 and 301 apartments in an eight-story building across the street at 255, for 616 units on 6.3 acres. Filings list a club room, lounge, fitness center, and two-level roof decks on the six-story side; the eight-story side would add a bike room, pool deck, and roof deck. Both sit over podium parking. The sites had been flagged earlier on Affordable Housing Overlay maps. No construction calendar is attached yet. Final entitlements still have to clear San Jose planners.

The same developer is already at work a block away at 210 Baypointe, where 42 townhomes and a 292-unit rental building are replacing a one-story office. Baypointe VTA light rail is the commute argument. North San Jose has been the city’s designated tech-job cluster for years; putting mid-rise housing on leftover pads next to that cluster is the general-plan logic in plain language. Del Rey’s principals, John Arrillaga Jr. and Jason Peery, sit in the family line of Peery Arrillaga, the firm that assembled much of the valley’s suburban office stock.

Source: The Mercury News

Dollar Tree Joins the Next Wave at The Plant

Dollar Tree is combining three storefronts at The Plant, the 650,000-square-foot power center at Monterey Road and Curtner Avenue, into a new shop at 2151 Monterey. Suites 40, 60, and 80 add up to about 9,772 square feet on the leasing flyer. Suite 40 used to be Payless. No opening date has been posted. A Customer Service Associate listing already uses that Monterey Highway address, which is usually a sign the build-out is underway. Dollar Tree opened more than 100 stores in the first quarter of 2026 and still plans about 400 new locations this year even while closing 75 others.

The Plant has been filling holes since Arc Capital Partners and Milan Capital Management bought the center for $95 million in August 2024. Vacancy had been high under the previous owner. Target and Home Depot still sit as shadow anchors; Realty Income paid $73 million for the Home Depot pad in late 2024 without changing the store. Best Buy, Ross, Ulta, PetSmart, and a string of restaurants never left.

Vallarta Supermarkets is slated to take the old Toys R Us box, close to 60,000 square feet, with a November target. That would be Vallarta’s first Bay Area store and would put a full cocina next to the big-box row. Chikin Drip, the San Jose hot-chicken outfit, already opened a second kitchen at 81 Curtner inside the same property. Sixteen dining spots and ten national anchors are the pitch the landlords have been using.

The full directory and hours are available at https://www.plantsanjose.com.

Source: SVBJ

Council Takes Up a Five-Year Parking Hike on Tuesday

City Council will hear a revised downtown parking plan on Tuesday, September 29. Downtown Parking Board Vice Chair Tamiko Rast sent an open letter last week asking the council to pause. The Department of Transportation’s five-year ladder would raise garage hourly rates by $1 in year one and special-event garage rates by $3. Year two would add $1 an hour to about 1,600 core meters now at $2. Year three would keep those meters running until 9 p.m. instead of 6 p.m. Year four would add another $2 to event rates. Year five would lift every city meter by $1. The first 90 minutes in city garages, including the Convention Center Garage, would stay free. Sundays would stay free.

The Parking Fund takes in about $15 million a year. The current budget already pulled $1.2 million from that fund into the general fund to help cover a deficit north of $26 million. Staff project the full rate package, once it lands in 2030, would add about $4 million a year. Last fiscal year the fund also sent $972,000 to items outside Transportation, including fireworks, Downtown Ice upgrades, and business-development programs. Rast’s complaint is that the city is asking drivers to pay more while garages still have bad lighting, broken elevators, thin security, and dirty floors, and while the Parking Board has seen late packets and canceled meetings.

The San Jose Downtown Association made the same point in June, when the first version of the hike was yanked off the consent calendar after restaurant and bar owners filled the chambers. Raising the price of a dinner-and-show night without fixing the garage that night ends in is a tax on the recovery downtown has been trying to buy. Staff argue San Jose’s $2 meter is still cheap next to Oakland and San Francisco, and that evening demand now exists. Both can be true. The vote on Tuesday is whether the extra dollar goes into concrete and cameras first, or into the hole in the general fund.

City notice: https://www.sanjoseca.gov/Home/Components/News/News/7535/16

Source: San Jose Spotlight

SoFA Street Fair Takes Over First Street on Sunday

SoFA Street Fair Fall 26 lands Sunday, September 27, from 2 p.m. to about 7:30 p.m. across South First Street and the side streets that make up the SoFA District in Downtown San Jose. The posted grid puts bands, vendors, skate demos, burlesque, and independent wrestling on eight stages at once.

Pobladores Stage and Pobladores Dos sit at 501 South First. Silver Truck Stage is at 454 South First. Project X is at 22 East San Salvador. Haberdasher, 43 West San Salvador, runs rotating burlesque sets from 4 p.m. onward. UGWA Stage at 25 East William hosts the wrestling card, including a title match between Dave Dyra and Journey Fatu at 7. SoFA Market at 387 South First keeps the vendor row. Caravan Stage at 50 West San Salvador closes the night with Sad Boy Sinister at 7:30, while Philthy Dronez Y La Brigada De La Cumbia takes Pobladores at the same time. Gunderson High School Concert Band opens Silver Truck at 2. Skatepops and El Guapo split Project X in the mid-afternoon.

The fair shares the weekend with ILLO Mart two blocks west inside South Hall. Anyone already downtown for prints can walk east and catch a set without a second parking hunt. Start at First and San Salvador and move with the sound. The schedule lives at https://sofafall26.sched.com/

ILLO Mart Packs South Hall With 250-Plus Illustrators This Weekend

San José Made will run the 2nd annual ILLO Mart on Saturday and Sunday, September 26 and 27, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. both days inside South Hall at 435 South Market Street in Downtown San Jose. Admission is free. Last year’s first edition proved the city could fill a hall with working illustrators. This year’s floor holds more than 250 booths. Vendor slots sold out. The first 1,000 people through the door each day get an event-only 4-by-6 notepad drawn by @poxei.

The back of the hall is set up for people who want to make something instead of only buying prints. Figure drawing runs all day, first come first served, clothed models, short and long poses. Charcoal and paper are on loan while they last. Jacquelin De Leon leads a $10 digital portrait class at 12:30 both days and a $20 watercolor class at 2:30. Malisa Suchanya’s wooden-mushroom painting slots cycle through the afternoon. Sunday only, Elda The of Thousand Skies teaches 4-by-6 rubber-stamp carving for $20, noon to 2 p.m. and 2:30 to 4:30 p.m., age 12 and up. Four artists run a stamp rally; spend $8 at their tables and collect a set of riso prints at booth E406 while supplies last.

South Hall sits next to the Convention Center garage. Street parking is free on Sunday and the VTA light rail and buses stop within two blocks. No outside food or drink.

Details and workshop reservations: https://www.sanjosemade.com/pages/illo-mart-2026

Kensuke Takahashi Opens His First Northern California Solo Show at Empire Seven

Yokohama painter and muralist Kensuke Takahashi will return to the wall he painted last year, then step inside Empire Seven Studios for Yaoyorozu｜八百万, his first solo exhibition in Northern California. The opening reception runs Saturday, October 3, from 6 to 9 p.m. The show stays up through November 29 at 525 North Seventh Street, Suite 10, on the edge of Japantown.

Takahashi has worked full time as an artist since 2005. During the 2025 San Jose Walls festival he covered the exterior next to the gallery with a family voyage told entirely through Shinto figures. No human bodies appear. A monkey in samurai armor, close to Sarutahiko Ōkami, leads the party with a gourd of sake. A tiger, the Tora, wears a shimenawa rope that marks the line between ordinary ground and sacred space and stands in for a mother’s protection. An egret, the Sagi, carries a taiko drum wrapped in a child’s indigo handkerchief. A three-legged crow, Yatagarasu, travels as a stand-in for a first child and a guide. Takahashi later said the wall came from missing home while painting abroad, then left room for anyone else to invent the rest of the story.

Yaoyorozu, eight million, is an old Japanese way of talking about abundance and the spirits that can live in objects, weather, memory, and people. The gallery is treating the indoor work as a closer look at the same world that already sits on the brick outside. Limited signed prints of the mural will be available; Empire Seven asked collectors to email the studio for the pre-sale list.

Juan Carlos Araujo and Jennifer Ahn have run Empire Seven since 2008, first as a Japantown storefront, later as the producers of San Jose Walls, the local arm of the Worldwide Walls network. Bringing a Yokohama artist back for a two-month solo run is consistent with how they have worked: put a foreign language of myth on a San Jose wall, then give the same artist a room where people can stand still. Walk the mural first if the timing works, then go inside on October 3. Details and collector inquiries live at www.empiresevenstudios.com.

PWHL San Jose Gets a National TV Window Before Opening Night

The Professional Women’s Hockey League locked in its first full-season U.S. television deal with Scripps Sports, which means PWHL San Jose (now called the NorCal Rumble) will arrive at SAP Center already visible in more than 128 million households. ION will carry a Saturday Game of the Week. Scripps Sports Network, the free streaming channel on Roku, Prime Video, Tubi and similar platforms, will add two more national games each week. ION also keeps the Walter Cup Finals and one extra playoff series. Every game will still stream on YouTube and PWHL.com outside Canada.

That package matters here because the local team has not played a minute yet. The league announced San Jose on May 19 as the twelfth franchise and the first in California, part of a four-city expansion class with Detroit, Hamilton, and Las Vegas. Home ice is SAP Center. Practice ice is Sharks Ice. General manager and head coach Troy Ryan has begun signing the draft class; defender Laila Edwards, taken fourth overall in June, put pen to a three-year deal this month. Training camps open November 18. Regular-season puck drop is expected later this year, with the NHL calendar still dictating exact dates around the Sharks and the arena’s renovation work.

Season-ticket deposits of $50 per seat have been collecting since May, time-stamped for priority when packages go on sale. Single-game tickets have not dropped. A nickname is still pending; Hammerheads has been floated in public. What the TV deal buys in the meantime is a Saturday habit. A new club in a busy building cannot wait until the first faceoff to explain who it is. Three national windows a week give casual viewers a reason to find the logo before they find the box office.

San Jose already runs an NHL team, an AHL team, and one of the country’s larger youth hockey footprints. Adding a PWHL club makes the city the only U.S. market with all three rungs on the same civic ice. Interest forms and merch live at https://www.thepwhl.com/en/teams/san-jose.

Source: Silicon Valley Business Journal

San Jose’s Short Film Festival Returns to Santana Row for Its 18th Year

The San Jose International Short Film Festival will occupy Cinemark CinéArts at Santana Row from Thursday, October 22, through Sunday, October 25. Organizers are calling it the largest edition yet, with more than 150 shorts from around the world packed into more than 20 screening blocks. MovieMaker has listed SJSFF among the top 50 festivals worth the entry fee. For four days the recliner seats on Olsen Drive become the city’s window onto work that rarely gets a commercial run.

Thursday used to mean opening night only. This year a new Thursday Pass adds three afternoon blocks before the 7:30 p.m. premiere: And So It Begins at 2 p.m. (drama, comedy, animation, world cinema), A Brave New World at 3 p.m. (avant-garde comedy and drama), and World Cinema One at 4:30 p.m. (seven foreign-language shorts). The same pass covers opening night. Later days split into familiar lanes: two comedy programs including Make ’Em Laugh After Dark, science fiction under The World Beyond, suspense under I’ve Got a Bad Feeling About This, plus extra world cinema, documentary, animation, and family blocks. Filmmaker Q&As and nightly receptions sit around the screenings.

A single block ticket is listed at $10 to $15. Day passes that cover every program on one calendar day run $30 to $50. The $175 VIP All-Access pass unlocks every block, the opening-night afterparty, the VIP lounge, a festival shirt, the awards screening, and a commemorative lanyard. Guest of Honor details were still pending as of mid-September.

The theater itself is 4K DCP with surround sound, which is more than most shorts ever see outside a festival. Eighteen years in, SJSFF remains one of the most unique movie experiences of the year. Passes and the full block schedule are at https://sjsff.com/tickets/.

OpenAI Looking at a Power-Heavy Office in San Jose

OpenAI has been circling a 70,000-square-foot building at 2950 Zanker Road in North San Jose, a box whose real prize is not the floor plate but the 19 megawatts of electrical capacity already wired into it. People familiar with the talks said a lease with landlord Peninsula Land & Capital may already be signed. OpenAI did not comment. Roger Fields’ firm bought the property in 2024 after Electric Hydrogen had poured extra power into a site that already sat on a fat electrical feed.

That feed is why the rent under discussion was reported above $6 per square foot per month, more than double the recent asking average for North San Jose research-and-development space. Brokers have been listing ordinary R&D product in the low-to-mid twos. A tenant willing to pay triple that rate is not shopping for cubicles. Colliers has marketed the same address as high-performance industrial space with lab rooms, a data-center designation, five grade-level doors, a fenced yard of nearly 21,000 square feet, and 19 megawatts available, language aimed at hyperscale computing and heavy manufacturing rather than a conventional office user.

North San Jose has spent decades as a semiconductor and R&D corridor along Zanker, First Street, and the airport fringe. Vacancy in the submarket has been elevated while companies handed back older campuses, yet the buildings that already hold serious power have not sat idle. Figure AI, Credo, Archer Aviation, and others have taken large blocks nearby. The same shortage of ready megawatts that pushed Bloom Energy and Heron Power into expansion mode is now pulling AI names toward industrial shells instead of glass campuses. OpenAI has also been linked to a much larger Mountain View office deal; a Zanker lease would be a different kind of footprint, smaller in people and larger in watts.

San Jose officials have treated data-center and high-load users as a tax and utility revenue play when the projects stay inside existing industrial districts. Nineteen megawatts is modest next to the multi-gigawatt campuses OpenAI has announced in Ohio and Georgia, which is part of the point. A 70,000-square-foot building already on the grid can come online without a new substation fight. If the lease closes, North San Jose will have another reminder that the next wave of Silicon Valley demand is arriving first where the wires already are.

Source: Silicon Valley Business Journal

Symphony San Jose Opens Its 25th Anniversary Season With America at 250

The California Theatre at 345 South First Street will open Symphony San Jose’s 25th anniversary season on Saturday, October 3 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, October 4 at 2:30 p.m. The program, titled THE NEW WORLD: America at 250, ties the orchestra’s own milestone to the nation’s 250th year through three works that travel from the mythic West to a brand-new Bay Area premiere and on to Dvořák’s most famous symphony. The same season also marks the California Theatre’s 100th anniversary and 150 years since San Jose first heard an orchestral concert, so the weekend lands with extra weight for anyone who cares about Downtown San Jose’s cultural life.

Aaron Copland’s Billy the Kid Suite still does what it has done since 1938: pull folk tunes, open-sky harmonies, and gunslinger swagger into a few tightly scored scenes. After that, pianist Joyce Yang will give the Bay Area its first hearing of Jonathan Leshnoff’s Rhapsody on America, a work Symphony San Jose co-commissioned. Leshnoff wrote the rhapsody as a lyrical, rhythmically restless meditation on the American spirit, and Yang has already introduced it elsewhere in the commissioning consortium. The evening then turns to Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, “From the New World,” composed during his years in the United States and still the piece most people reach for when they want landscape, longing, and a big-hearted finish in the same hour.

Ken-David Masur will conduct both performances. The German-born American maestro, recently concluding a long Milwaukee Symphony tenure and a frequent guest with major U.S. orchestras, brings a clear beat and a taste for programs that mix familiar landmarks with living composers. Yang, a Van Cliburn silver medalist known for color and power at the keyboard, sits at the center of the Leshnoff. Together they give the anniversary opener a guest list that matches the occasion.

Saturday night adds an Opening Night Fanfare before the concert: a complimentary sip of champagne, live music, ballet dancers, and extra performances in the lobby as the house fills. Music Notes talks start one hour before each concert inside the auditorium. Adult ticket buyers can add guests age 17 and under at half price; single tickets run $35 to $125, fees included. The whole program lasts about one hour and 50 minutes with intermission.

Tickets and youth pricing details are at www.symphonysanjose.org or 408.286.2600.