Trammel Crow is a developer that acquired an 8.5 acre plot of land from Adobe for $58.5 million. Adobe was planning to build an expansion of their headquarters in this area, but instead reconfigured their existing three towers to support a larger number of employees (no more private offices for every employee). I think it was actually for the better. While I'm a huge fan of Adobe and believe they play a vital role Downtown, if they were to build out their expansion it would likely not have been very inclusive to the whole community. Trammel Crow on the other hand is planning the exact opposite.
I'm going to start with the quote from the developer that Nathan ended his SVBJ article with:
"We’ve committed ourselves to making it iconic," he said. "We think it will be a landmark in the South Bay."
Iconic sounds right. Trammel Crow want to build 800,000 SQFT of office space across two buildings 10-12 stories tall. This would be a 10% expansion of all the office space currently in Downtown San Jose today and the first major office project to break ground since 2010. 400,000 SQFT of the project would be built speculatively without requiring a signed tenant. This would also be Class A++ premium office space with huge 40,000 SQFT floor plates and soaring ceilings popular with tech companies.
There would be 325 apartment units in a separate nine-story building. The whole site would be sprinkled with shops and restaurants and even feature a large public plaza along West Santa Clara Street. The beautiful and historic San Jose Water Company building would be renovated and repurposed. 2,400 parking spaces would be built to support the whole project, mostly underground... but hopefully most people won't be driving here.
A big attraction to this spot for the developer is the access to transit at Diridon Station. They are even tentatively calling the project #Diridon. With Caltrain, Light Rail, Capital Corridor, ACE, and a VTA bus hub, this is already one of the most important transit hubs in California. In the future Diridon will also be getting multiple Bus Rapid Transit lines, BART, and California High-Speed Rail. Even the $2 billion Transbay Terminal will not be as well connected as Diridon.
Trammel is expecting to get their building permits in Q1 2016, start construction in the summer, and have the first office building ready for occupancy by the end of 2017. The apartments are slated for 2018. They are also promising a signature look that will make the project a South Bay landmark. I cant's wait to see the first drawings for this!
Source: SVBJ, Hat tip to Josh Russell for sending this in!
Workspace for ~8000 people, but living space for a mere ~600 of them? Wow, that should help out the San Jose housing crisis.
ReplyDeleteSan Jose has the greatest imbalance of housing and office of any large city in the US (with residential far outstripping office). It is actually the only major city that has a lower daytime population than night-time population. This means San Jose collects far lower taxes per capita than surrounding cities, which have the opposite situation (and is also one of the main reasons why Palo Alto and Mountain View are fiscally stable and San Jose is not). It is actually time for cities surrounding San Jose to build their fair share of housing, while San Jose focuses on office development to correct the imbalance.
DeleteAnon, your comment shows you know Jack Shit about San Jose. Instead of complaining about the small housing number in San Jose, go and complain about the towns of Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Campbell, Milpitas, and Cupertino. They build NO HOUSING at all.
DeleteMany of us here in San Jose are not even happy with the residential component of this project, I personally preferred no residential at all. So be happy with that 300 units, because to many of us, that's already too much for this site.
Currently tech companies will cram up to about 1 person per every 200sqft, to assume that 800000sqft will be about enough for 4000 employees crammed that well, to put in 8000 employees would mean that they are really really cramming people into that space. The truth is that demand for office space is not so high in downtown as to necessitate that.
DeleteYou act like it will all be leased, and likely not the case. Also adding jobs will help fix the jobs deficit in San Jose, and hopefully alleviate some of the traffic issues plaguing the area by allowing for shorter commutes, instead of building office space in Sunnyvale and Santa Clara, as is the current model.
actually, militias is doing a great job building housing near Bart and light rail
ReplyDeleteMilpitas is doing a great job of PROPOSING housing near BART and Light Rail. The only thing they got there is Apex Apartments that began building in 2012 and finished last year. 366 measly units in 3 freakin years! Better than nothing but pretty damn close to doing jack shit.
DeleteWake me up when they actually get going with all their BART proposals.
C'mon Bobby, there are plenty of other projects under construction or recently completed near LR and future BART: Ilara (200 units, completed in the last year), Citation is building a 700+ unit project near Montague, Lyon has gotten started with The District (370 units) and there are ton of townhouses right behind their site. Lennar is up next with 489 unit project (right across the street from the BART station and Montague LR) that should get started soon.
DeleteCitation is 370ish units, so that's roughly 700 units under construction. Not bad at all then.
DeleteAt least one of San Jose's surround dweeb towns is getting its shit together regarding housing.
I aint even gonna stoop to your level of personal attacks. Go find yourself a corner and have a cookie.
ReplyDeleteSNAP!!!!