Cyberpunk Downtown San Jose?

Drex Lee has created a slick augmented reality version of Downtown San Jose that looks straight out of Cyberpunk 2077. It's only 60 seconds long yet somehow showcases 17 different parts of the city with a neo-futuristic filter.

Check it out over here!

MIRO Towers being topped off

Below is a brief video from the top of MIRO, San Jose's future tallest set of buildings. The towers are currently at maximum height (just under 300 feet) and they should be ready for leasing some time next year. The views look quite stunning from up there.

Source: aphelion2100 from the San Jose Development Forum

Tramell Crow Diridon Project

A slick video has been released promoting the new Diridon mixed-use development in Downtown San Jose. As a reminder, the project includes 1 million SQFT of office space, 325 luxury apartments, 35,000 SQFT of retail space, and multiple public plazas.

The video cites various perks of the location including immediate access to the largest transit hub on the west coast, easy highway access, proximity to the airport, and of course being in the very center of the tech world. It is only 3 minutes long and is worth a watch. It's impressive to see the caliber of projects we are now getting.

Source: Hillrise from the San Jose Development Forum

Diridon from Diridon on Vimeo.

Time-lapse photo montage of Downtown high-rises

What happens when you piece together dozens of photos taken from City Heights between 2012 and 2016? You get a really neat 33 second montage showing the construction of One South, Centerra, and Silvery Towers. Check out the video below!

Big thanks to David Cheung for sending this in.

SJSU Drone Footage

In yet another Downtown San Jose drone video, you can explore the San Jose State University campus while listening to catchy music.

Downtown San Jose Drone Footage

A few people have been bringing drones to Downtown San Jose and capturing some impressive aerial footage. You can two of the best videos below. It would be interesting to see this same footage during December when all of the holiday decorations are up.

Source: Dirt Patch and Cardinal2007 from the San Jose Development Forum

Visit San Jose Promo Video

I just ran across this 90 second video below that highlights a lot of local (mostly San Jose) attractions in a very short period of time. Check it out for yourself!

Video: New Projects to Raise Downtown San Jose Skyline

CBS has created a nice two minute segment highlighting the high-rise boom in Downtown San Jose. They mention four project, but that is just scratching the surface. Expect Downtown to look quite a bit different five years from now than it does today.

Source: Rick Upton and Dirt Patch from the San Jose Development Forum


Transcript:

SAN JOSE (KPIX 5) — New high-rise projects are about to push San Jose’s historically low-rise skyline to new levels. But there’s a catch to all of this development.

When Mayor Sam Liccardo pulls up the blinds at his 18th floor office at City Hall, he sees a city growing up.

“I think you’re going to see more unique architecture as the downtown evolves,” Liccardo said.

That evolution is taking off again. At least four new high rise commercial and residential projects in the pipeline for Downtown San Jose. Dramatic, soaring projects that will reshape the city skyline and bring thousands of more residents to live here.

“We are seeing much more interest and investment in the downtown than I think anyone has seen in several generations,” Liccardo told KPIX 5.

But the sky is not the limit. Downtown San Jose lies in the final approach flight path to Mineta San Jose International Airport. The FAA has restricted buildings to 24 stories on the south end of downtown and 18 stories closer to the airport.

It will forever give the city a “blockier” look than a Manhattanized one.

“I’m certain we have lost an opportunity to build dozens of high rise towers because of the height restrictions imposed by the airport,” Liccardo said.

When new buildings go up, parking will go away. Acres of surface level parking lots, a downtown mainstay for decades, will slowly disappear as new buildings take their place.

“We’re going to have a lot of underground parking to replace that,” said Jimmy Starkovich, who has worked in Downtown San Jose for 40 years.

“San Jose is really starting to become alive,” he said.

New Rendering Video for Museum Place!

The most ambitious high-rise proposal in Downtown San Jose is getting a bit more real. Insight Realty has created a simulation of what some of the spaces in the massive project could look like. "Museum Place" includes a 60,000 SQFT expansion of The Tech Museum, 210,000 SQFT of office space, twelve floors of condos, a boutique hotel, and a floor of luxury penthouse condos. Watch the two minute video below to get a sense of what the area around The Tech might look like in a few years!

Source: Hillrise from the San Jose Development Forum

Sourisseau News: St. James Park

Did you ever wonder about the origins of St. James Park? The two minute video below gives the best summary I have seen of the park's nearly 170 year history. It is almost impossible to believe today that St. James Park once looked like the image you see below. On the bright side, a substantial effort is underway to revitalize the park and turn it back into a valued asset for our city.

Anyway, watch the video below!


St James Park from WMS media Inc. on Vimeo.

Sourisseau News: 1906 Earthquake

Today is the 109th anniversary of the 1906 Earthquake. As you can see from the short video below, Downtown San Jose was devastated by the famous quake. A lot more damage was done in the South Bay than most people realize. The video is only two and a half minutes long and is well worth watching!


1906 Earthquake in San Jose from WMS media Inc. on Vimeo.

CBS Video on Downtown Retail

Below is a short video featuring Adam Mayberry (from the DH Company) talking about his concept for a pop-up retail district in Downtown San Jose made up of shipping containers. This would be great in a number of open parking lots that we currently have.

SAN JOSE (CBS SF) – Looking to revive retail in Downtown San Jose, one entrepreneur is hoping to create a pop-up shopping mall created out of shipping containers.

Adam Mayberry had big ideas and just a little cash. So he built a small store into a shipping container and placed it in Downtown San Jose for the holidays. It worked, well enough for him to make a go of it year-round, selling custom designed sports apparel.

“The idea behind the shipping container store is that businesses could test the waters such as myself in downtown,” Mayberry told KPIX 5.

Now he’s thinking bigger. Mayberry wants to take his single concept store and blow it up, creating a sort of pop-up shopping district made entirely of shipping container stores with built in cafes and sitting areas.

“If you string four or five of these together, in our case we want about 15, then you have a critical mass of businesses, advertising to their customers and in turn bringing customers to their neighbors,” Mayberry said.

He’s now trying to sell the idea to downtown landowners, including operators of parking lots that could be flipped into the city’s newest mini malls.

“With pop ups, there’s a lower barrier to entry, a lower cost to get in,” said Daniel Harris of the Knight Foundation.

The idea has some big supporters, including the Knight Foundation and the San Jose Downtown Association.

“This could be a step into a potential brick and mortar establishment,” said Scott Knies of the association. “It has promise. You could see this happening really easily with some of the open space that we have.”

Retail has been one of the big missing links in Downtown San Jose for about the last 45 years, ever since the big suburban shopping malls like Valley Fair started gaining in popularity. There are blocks and blocks of vacant store fronts in downtown, and the stores that are open are often spread out making window shopping difficult.

They are not the most attractive things. But backers say they don’t have to be, they just have to be better looking than the blighted closed up shops that downtown has now.

Downtown Ice with Google Glass

What happens when you mix Google Glass and Downtown Ice? Check out the video below to find out. The unique ice rink in Downtown San Jose is open until January 11th, so you still have a full week to enjoy it for yourself!

CBS: San Jose Rolls Out Welcome Mat For Bustling Downtown

Last weekend there was a great story on CBS Local about Downtown San Jose. This gist is that Downtown is becoming Silicon Valley's new housing hot spot, with multiple high-rise residential buildings on the way and easy access to amenities, culture, and transit.

The new buildings will be targeting tech workers, with rents in the $3,000/mo range. The story mentions that there are already 90 tech companies in the Downtown core, but avid readers will remember that we now have over 100!

You can find the video and transcript below.

Source: CBS Local

Text from the video:

SAN JOSE (KPIX 5) — The city of San Jose is rolling out the welcome mat for tech workers and businesses to move to the city’s changing downtown.

At a massive new high rise apartment building, workers are laying the groundwork for a new kind of downtown San Jose, one with thousands of new residents who are younger and hipper.

“We’re making San Jose more and more hip every day,” said Mayor-Elect Sam Liccardo. “But it’s not happening from city hall, it’s happening because of the creative people who already live there.”

People like Jeff Michaud, a manager in a Silicon Valley tech company, who just moved here from Austin. “A fair number of my co-workers live in San Francisco and commute down, I’m not a big fan of the commute,” Michaud said.

His new home has gorgeous views with restaurants, shopping, entertainment and mass transit all just steps away.

“There’s a lot to do, especially beneficial when you come home late from work. You don’t feel like cooking, I don’t have to worry about that,” Michaud said.

With three cranes in the air, and at least six more condo and apartment buildings on the way, Downtown San Jose is the new housing hot spot in Silicon Valley.

Even with rents already in the $3,000 a month range, high-tech workers with comfortable paychecks will fill up the buildings fast according to one realtor, causing a welcome economic ripple effect for other businesses.

“The more people you bring, the more that will follow,” said Michael Murphy of Silicon Valley Lofts and Condos. “So we’ll probably see a lot more activity from a retail perspective with those people here.”

Ninety high tech companies are now located in the downtown core, one of them is Xactly. It makes sales-oriented software for companies such as Coca Cola.

CEO Chris Cabrera said the company was lured by the prices. “When we first came to San Jose, it really was because it was the best deal in town. And when we came down here, it really was an unexpected surprise,” he said.

The company is now doubling down on office space, relocating to a bigger building nearby for its growing workforce. “If we try to move, our employees would revolt because they love it,” Cabrera said.

Downtown’s vacancy rate has gone from 29 percent to 18 percent in the last two years. But large holes and empty storefronts remain, including the failed San Jose Repertory Theatre, which is now vacant.

The city is countering with a big marketing push playing up the downtown’s live/work environment.
Lee Wilcox of the San Jose Office of Economic Development said, “The amenities, the talented work force, there are great opportunities for companies to take advantage of what San Jose has to offer.”

And for the first time, San Jose made Forbes list of America’s Coolest Cities. San Jose was 16th on the list, tied for Los Angeles.

Sourisseau News: College of Notre Dame

Did you know that the College of Notre Dame in Belmont was originally in Downtown San Jose? They had quite an impressive looking campus located at Notre Dame Avenue by San Pedro Square. Check out the two minute video below for some great local history!


College of Notre Dame from WMS media Inc. on Vimeo.

Sourisseau News: A Tale of Two City Halls

What city is that below? Check out the following short video to see two of San Jose's previous city halls... one that looks like a castle and the magnificent structure below. This might be my favorite Sourisseau News video so far.

A Tale of Two City Halls - San Jose from WMS media Inc. on Vimeo.

Sourisseau News: 99 Notre Dame, the Birthplace of the Magnetic Disk Drive

How many people knew that the hard drive was invented in Downtown San Jose about a block away from where the San Pedro Square Market sits today? Check out the great 2-minute video below for a quick history lesson on how IBM developed RAMAC in San Jose, the first system for storing data on magnetic disks.


99 Notre Dame, the birthplace of the magnetic disk drive from WMS media Inc. on Vimeo.

"Today's iPod-toting hipsters have no idea how much they owe to an unremarkable little building in downtown San Jose. It was there, at 99 Notre Dame Ave., nearly 50 years ago, that a small band of IBM engineers developed the RAMAC, the first system for storing data on magnetic disks.

The RAMAC was a big success for IBM. Big Blue made more than 1,000 of the machines over a five-year period, helping establish the company's dominance in mainframe computing. Today, just a few of the original RAMACs are known to exist. One sits outside Hoagland's office on the third floor of the engineering building at Santa Clara University.

The RAMAC's specifications are laughable by today's standards. Some hard drives are as small as a quarter and can store 100 billion bits of data per square inch, 50 million times that of the RAMAC. Hitachi, for example, recently announced the development of "Mikey,'' a one-inch hard drive weighing just 14 grams and able to hold up to 10 gigabytes of data.

The company is also testing a new method of aligning data bits on hard disks vertically instead of horizontally. The new orientation could allow companies to increase hard drive storage capacity tenfold, Munce said. "I think things like micro-drives will change the way we consume digital entertainment,'' he said. Hoagland's goal is to preserve the legacy of the hard-disk innovation in San Jose. As director of the Magnetic Disk Heritage Center, he has been pushing to create a museum at 99 Notre Dame Ave.

He may get his wish. The San Jose City Council recently passed a resolution promising to begin discussions around the idea. And a couple of city council members are due at tonight's ceremony, organized by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. "My dream,'' Hoagland said, "is if you think of the RAMAC, you think of Rey Johnson and you think of 99 Notre Dame Ave."

By Michael Bazeley
San Jose Mercury News

Recent Downtown San Jose Video

The video below is a collage of footage from Downtown San Jose taken in March of this year. It highlights many of the key areas Downtown and includes some nice construction shots.

Source: "jawz" from SkyscraperCity

 

Downtown San Jose Restaurant Boom

Check out the video embedded below about the restaurant boom happening right now in Downtown. Pete Be, owner of the new Da Kine Island Grill and Tracy Lee from Dishcrawl are featured on the NBC Bay Area segment.

1908 - The Great Race

In the latest minute-long San Jose history lesson courtesy of WMS Media, learn about the 1908 Great Race and their pit-stop in Downtown San Jose! As an added bonus, here is a PDF from the Sourisseau Academy with several historical photos of San Jose.


1908 - The Great Race from WMS media Inc. on Vimeo.
Learn about how the 1908 Great Race route came through San Jose and how drivers stopped at the famous Lamolle French Restaurant on San Pedro and Santa Clara Street!