Saturday Stats: #1 Easiest City For Finding a Job

In order to find the easiest and hardest cities for finding jobs, Indeed.com looked at the population of each metro and compared it to the number of job listings in the area. With 123 advertised jobs for every 1,000 residents, San Jose took the cake by a mile. The runner up was Raleigh, North Carolina with 88 openings for every 1,000 residents. Washington, DC came third (87 jobs per 1,000 residents) followed by Boston (83) and Denver (80).

Source: Forbes

Turkey Trot 2014 Next Week

The 10th Annual Turkey Trot is taking place next week on Thanksgiving morning. There will be Elite 5k/10k races, a Wheelchair 5k/10k, a Run/Walk 5k, Costume Contests, and a Kid's Fun Run. The race starts at Santa Clara Street at Market and finishes at Santa Clara Street at Delmas with a huge festival at the Guadalupe River Park and Arena Green. Over the past 9 years this event has raised $4 million for local charities. The goal for this year is to raise $1 million!

For more information and to sign up for the event, head over here!

Downtown San Jose - Current Development Projects

The San Jose Downtown Association has released its latest development map showing off the projects in the works today in Downtown San Jose (you will have to click on it to blow it up and get a good look). Blue squares are the four existing Downtown residential high-rises, anything in yellow is currently in development, and purple indicates development sites for future projects.

There are two surprises on here that Robertee points out. The first is a "Mill Creek" project with 194 units and 3,500 SQFT of retail a few doors down from the San Pedro Square Market in what is currently a parking lot. This should be a great infill project to continue accelerating the traction in the San Pedro area. The second is a Park & Almaden 5-story office project, which would be the first major office project in Downtown San Jose in over a decade. This new office would replace a super-ugly abandoned two story building that looks like a jail.

If half of the projects on this map come to fruition, it will already have a dramatic impact to Downtown San Jose.

Source: Robertee from the San Jose Development Forum

Future of VTA Light Rail

Last week there was a "Future of VTA Light Rail" presentation to SPUR San Jose. Below are the slides. Here are some interesting notes:

• Light Rail has 35,000 average daily riders, 62 stations, 79.6 miles of track, and 100 trains
• The most used stations are San Antonio, Santa Clara (both in Downtown San Jose), and Tasman
• Compared to other systems of similar size, boardings per mile are quite low and farebox recovery is the second lowest in the country (only DART in Dallas is lower)
• The current goals of VTA Light Rail are to increase ridership, speed up the system, spend money wisely, and be more relevant to the needs of the Valley
• Recommended Capital Improvements
• Grade separation on North First and Montague Expressway
• Fencing North First to increase top speed from 35 MPH to 45 MPH
• Pocket track at Ohlone/Chynoweth
• New Great America Station
• SJSU Extension to 11th Street (???)
• Almaden Branch, Mountain View, and Vasono Double Track
• Use bollards to separate tracks in Downtown San Jose and speed up trains
• Mountain View Double track to be completed by the end of 2015
• Levi's Stadium events are attracting 8,000-9,000 boardings on game days

Source: I Heart SJ

The Future of VTA Light Rail, Presentation to SPUR San Jose Nov. 12, 2014 from SCVTA

Vogliazzo Home About to be Torn Down

A historic Neo-classical home at 152 Terraine Street (across from the San Pedro Square Market) is scheduled to be torn down on November 30th to make way for Silvery Towers. In order to preserve this property built back in 1912, a group from Little Italy San Jose have put together a campaign to get the house moved to a lot on the Guadalupe River Park right next to Little Italy. For more information on the history of the house, a rare look inside, and the location of the move, please watch the short video below.


Please help us save this historic Vogliazzo home at 152 Terraine Street from WMS media Inc. on Vimeo.

This historic home is about to be demolished to make way for a high rise building in San Jose. Please help us save this home by moving it to Little Italy San Jose.

To make a donation: razoo.com/story/Save-The-Historic-Vogliazzo-Home?referral_code=share

For more information please contact:

JOSHUA DEVINCENZI MELANDER
Executive Director
jcmelander@yahoo.com
(408) 394-2893

DEBBIE CAMINITI
Assistant Director
dcami123456@comcast.net

TWO BUCK Tuesday Today at KALEID Gallery

If you are interested in killer local art deals, you have to check out TWO BUCK Tuesday at KALEID (88 South Fourth Street, next to Flames). There will be live demos and painting by over a dozen artists and the best part is that you can purchase original works for the ultra-reasonable price of $2. There will also be live music and cheesecakes for sale. More info below!

Join us for our monthly artist and quirky people get together featuring live art, demos, live music and $2 original art to take home! Tuesday November 18th, 7–10pm, free & all ages. Live painting and demos by: Jeffrey Bramschreiber Brandon Anderton Gianfranco Paolozzi Mark Martinez Michael David Denning Al Preciado, Jay Cee and Nekyua James Pollard Noggin Mojica Erica Arteya Steve Borelli Jennifer Blake April Burton Darius Alexander Dave Mejia Vanessa Callanta and Alexander Creationz will have delicious cheesecakes for sale Music by DJ Blaze 88 South Fourth Street (@ San Fernando) San Jose, CA 95112 info@KALEIDGallery.com 408-947-1785 Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, noon -7pm Free admission

New BART to Downtown San Jose Proposal

The largest public transit project in the Bay Area is rapidly moving forward, but there is one major hiccup for Phase II of BART's extension to the South Bay. Phase I is fully funded and should be completed no later than 2018, running BART mass transit trains to both Milpitas and Berryessa. Phase II--which includes stations at Alum Rock, Downtown San Jose, Diridon, and Santa Clara--is now at risk of losing a huge chunk of Federal Funding. Timing is absolutely critical here. The project needs to enter the Federal New Starts Program by the end of 2014, or $1.1 billion of funding could be cut from the project, putting the whole phase at risk.

A four station Phase II BART extension will cost $4.7 billion. That breaks down into $1.1 billion from the Federal New Starts Program, $1.4 billion from Measure A, and a whopping $3 billion is unaccounted for. This puts the project at a high risk of being rejected by the Federal New Starts Program and we would likely need new substantial taxes to fund the $3 billion gap.

So here is the new proposal to get things off the ground and secure most of the funding within the next two months. Let's only build two station in Phase II: Downtown San Jose and Diridon. These will be by far the most utilized stations in the South Bay extension and would result in substantially reducing the cost of Phase II. The total cost would now become $3.4 billion, $1.1 billion from the Federal New Starts Program, $1.4 billion from Measure A, and a $1.7 billion gap. Since more than 50% of the project would be funded, it would greatly improve our chances of getting federal funding.

Personally, while I would love to have the full four stations now... I would gladly take these two over no extension at all (or one delayed to 2030). The Alum Rock and Santa Clara stations could be built in a future Phase III. In fact, my dream scenario for Phase III would be these two stations plus a further extension up north to Levi's Stadium/Great America, Mountain View, and Palo Alto.

We have to start somewhere. What do you guys think about dropping two stations temporarily in order to ensure BART connects with Silicon Valley's urban core?

Lord of the Rings Trilogy with Live Orchestra at Symphony Silicon Valley

One weekend to rule them all.

Symphony Silicon Valley, Chorale, and Howard Shore (composer of the award-winning Lord of the Rings soundtrack) presents an epic weekend of the entire trilogy complete with a LIVE orchestra. 

And it'll be in downtown San Jose, April 2015. 

So before I get any further into this post - full disclosure - I'm doing a little bit of work related to this event. So when I found out about it I immediately knew that our readers at The San Jose Blog would love to hear about it. Of course, if you hadn't already via the front page news on The San Jose Mercury News or other media outlets like Twitter, etc, that have since spread the news.

That said - I really wanted to write about it. I've seen the movies, but never read the books. However, my husband is the big fan. He's read the books, seen the movies umpteen times, and back when Return of the King premiered, he and a friend went to an all day marathon screening of all the films back to back. 

So our household is very familiar with the Lord of the Rings. And perhaps needless to say, my husband is *very* interested in this news. 

Even though the event doesn't happen until April, the tickets are already going fast. My husband has already noted to me that this would make a great Christmas gift for him. He actually said to me, "Wink wink, nudge nudge." Yeah ok, hubs. I got it. 

The epic event happens in two different cycles to choose from:

Lord of the Rings Cycle 1:

April 16, 2015 7:00 pm The Fellowship of the Ring April 17, 2015 7:00 pm The Two Towers April 18, 2015 7:00 pm The Return of the King
April 19, 2015 1:00 pm The Two Towers
April 19, 2015 6:30 pm The Return of the King

Lord of the Rings Cycle 2

April 18, 2015 1:00 pm The Fellowship of the Ring

Tickets for all three films are sold in a package at $330, $240, and $150. Single (film) tickets may be available for any remaining seats at a future date: $120, $90, and $60. 

The San Jose Center for the Performing Arts is located at 255 S. Almaden Blvd, San Jose, CA 95113.

You can buy them at: www.lotrssv.org and www.symphonysiliconvalley.org