Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Irish Innovation Center Grand Opening Photos

Star Trek Leaving Town Soon

The Star Trek exhibition at The Tech is just in town for a few more weeks. If you want to check this out, here is your last chance. You can pick up tickets at http://www.thetech.org/StarTrek/, and be sure to use the checkout code "spock" for a 20% discount on the tickets!

The Usuals: New Works by Frances Marin Tomorrow




The Usuals
1020 The Alameda, San Jose, CA 95126
San Jose, CA


"This Never Happened"
New works by Frances Marin

Friday, March 25th
7:00p - 10:00p
On view thru April 18th

Performances by:
The Oddly Even
and
Fare Station

Storefront DJs:
James Vidal
and
Hells Bells

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

SJC Adds First New Airline In 5 Years

Today San Jose International announced that they are adding daily flights from Volaris Airlines, a budget-minded Mexican airline. The first route will be to the second largest city in Mexico, Guadalajara. As mentioned in the headline, this is the first new Airline to come to SJC in almost 5 years. Hopefully a sign of things to come! For more info click here.

Monday, March 22, 2010

Update on Downtown Condo Sales

This week's edition of the Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal has an article with an update on downtown condo sales entitled "Developers see turnaround in downtown San Jose high-rise condo market."

Here are the latest numbers:
  • 360 Residences
    • 213 Units
    • 90 Sold (Opening Soon for Occupancy)
  • Axis
    • 329 Units
    • 86 Sold
  • The 88
    • 197 Units
    • 57 Sold
  • City Heights
    • 124 Units
    • 92 Sold
To read the full article click here.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Happy Hollow Park & Zoo Grand Opening Weekend

Yesterday I took my goddaughter to the grand re-opening of Happy Hollow! The renovations and expansions are pretty impressive, this is definitely not the Happy Hollow Park & Zoo I remember from my childhood.

The park is now divided into 3 main sections: 1.) massive children's play area with rides and a titanic-sized play set  2.) the main zoo 3.) petting zoo (part of section 2 in the old park) and lemur play area. While everything was substantially renovated, what impressed me the most was the third section--which had one of the most innovative designs I have ever seen in an amusement park. A huge chunk of this area was themed around lemurs; however, instead of just having an expansive zoo exhibit of lemurs there is also a lemur-themed play area adjacent to it. So kids can essentially watch the lemurs while immediately imitating there actions in the play area. Excellent idea!

The entrance, store, restaurant, restrooms, and education facilities are all brand new. There are several new rides as well as new animal exhibits. Also, there are quite a few improvements still to come. Several areas are under construction and there are still 3 animal exhibits that haven't opened yet: bats, bees, and foxes.

One observation I had while walking back to the car was just how much underutilized space there is in Kelly park. We're talking dozens of acres here. How nice would it be to eventually build out a full zoo equivalent to San Francisco or Oakland? I think this current renovation and expansion will put Happy Hollow on the map as an exceptional children's park, but a full-blown zoo would increase it's appeal to a much larger audience. It could also be a profitable venture for San Jose, just a thought!












Thursday, March 18, 2010

San Pedro Square Market Video

Short video with a nice walk-through of what will become the San Pedro Square Market. I would love to be out on that second floor balcony on a nice day like today, can't wait to see what will go in that space:

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

St. Patty's Day Post: Irish Innovation Center Opens Downtown!

Last Sunday I was able to get into the ribbon cutting ceremony for the Irish Innovation Center located in Downtown San Jose. These offices will be a launching pad for Irish startup companies that want a presence in Silicon Valley. The event was a huge success with encouraging speeches from Brian Cowen (Prime Minister of Ireland), Chuck Reed, Sam Liccardo, Dr. Craig Barrett (former CEO of Intel), Tom McEnery, and Gordon Ciochon (Former Head of Global Operations at Symantec). We need to continue to keep the San Jose entrepreneurial community active and this is a giant step in the right direction. If we can center that entrepreneurial community in the middle of Downtown San Jose, then that's just icing on the cake.

I'll have some photos from the event for you soon, but for now I can offer you the shortest Sam Liccardo interview of all time courtesy of David Manzo: