San Pedro Square Market has a Launch Date!

August 1st, mark it on your calendars! That's the date the San Pedro Square Market is officially launching! At less than 6 months away, this is a pretty aggressive target date. They also have a new Facebook page here.

Earthquakes Stadium Renders

I don't know about you guys, but I'm drooling over these Quakes stadium renders. My only concern is noise with the proximity of the airport and the U-shaped design. Earthquakes fans will have no choice but to be louder than the planes ;).

New Business Incentives Downtown

In order to encourage more businesses to set up shop downtown, Chuck Reed and 3 council members are proposing several new incentives for business owners. Here are the benefits entrepreneurs would experience if the proposal succeeds:

• No license fees for new small businesses.
• No parking fees for two years for businesses that sign or renew a downtown lease.
• Potential tax reductions.
• Defer impact fees over an extended period of time (what developers pay for infrastructure improvements).

It's no secret that opening a business downtown can require dealing with plenty of red tape and inefficient city policies that slow down the process substantially. Hopefully if the proposal goes through it will also allow new businesses to open their doors much faster as there is some mention of committing additional resources to development. They mayor implies that the city's development office would operate "at the speed of business" to help move things along.

Veggielution Is Opening Up Farmstand on Saturdays

The group of socially conscious urban farmers known as Veggielution are about to start sharing some of that fine locally-grown produce of theirs. On Saturday Feb 13th, they are going to have a soft opening of their Farmstand from 2:30pm to 5pm. The plan is to have the Farmstand open every Saturday afternoon, and of course they are also planning to open up shop at The Public Market on San Pedro Square this summer.

For their opening they will likely be selling scallions, lettuce, choi sum, arugula, cilantro, broccoli, kale, and chard. What is really interesting (and commendable) is that pricing is on a sliding scale so you pay what you can.

Check it out Feb 13 at 647 S King Road in San Jose.

First Friday Art Walk Today!

It's that time again. Rain or shine, the show will go on tomorrow in the SoFA district. I say it ever month... there is no better way to experience the San Jose art scene than to participate in these art walks. The galleries are open from 8pm to late (sometimes all night) and you have literally a hundred restaurants in walking distance... not to mention bars, night clubs, comedy clubs, movie theaters, the highest concentration of yogurt shops in the world, and guaranteed good times. Okay, I may be exaggerating on the yogurt shops but not the good times, so check it out!

Below is a map of all the places participating in the art walk. If you want the details on what each venue has to offer, you can always click this link. But do you really want to ruin the surprise?

Photos From December's First Friday

To get you in the mood for First Friday tomorrow, here are a few photos I took last First Friday:

Icebee Yogurt Now Open

If you're craving yogurt and you just happen to be in Downtown San Jose, you surely won't go hungry. There are now at least 5 yogurt shops downtown: Penguin Froyo, Cafe Yolicious, Swirls, Chillfactor, and now Icebee.

Located next to the Pita Pit on 2nd St., Icebee is a self-serve shop with 12 different flavors--including organic yogurt which you don't see very often--as well as the usual assortment of toppings. The atmosphere is modern and hip with a really slick booth in the middle of the store. Definitely a sweet addition to First St. which will one day provide contiguous retail between Santa Clara and SoFA Downtown.

Axis Art Gallery Opens Its Doors

We have yet another art gallery opening in Downtown San Jose, this time at the ground floor of Axis in one of the live/work units (#101). Axis Art Gallery features the work of photographer Deborah Mills Thackrey, painters Archil Pinchkhadze and Chris Elliman, as well as work by Tom Thackrey, Michael Buscemi, Julia Jacobson, Chris Sican, Phil Bongiorno, and Stefani Esta.

For more information, take a look at their website here.

Art work above by Archil Pichkhadze