March 2016 Downtown Dimension Highlights

Here are my notes from the latest edition of Downtown Dimension:

• Several restaurant owners are "doubling down" in Downtown San Jose with multiple locations and concepts, sometimes right next door to one another. Some examples are:
• Original Gravity and Paper Plane
• Phonomenal Noodle and On the Flipside
• Chacho's and Deluxe
• Oni Mexicatessen and Loteira Taco Bar
• B2 Coffee and Social Policy (opening this month)
• Konjoe Burger and Konjoe Tei
• Four new art crosswalks and one intersection design hit the streets to delight Downtown pedestrians:
• SoFA's 25-foot-by-20-foot abstract at the intersection of South First and San Salvador
• San Pedro art crosswalks on San Pedro Street (there are two of them)
• Paseo de San Antonio art crosswalks (two here as well book-ending the Paseo)
• WeWork has leased 75,000 SQFT for shared co-working office space at 75 E. Santa Clara Street.
• TechShop is moving to the former Zanotto's store at 38 S. Second Street.
• The SoFA Market has two new businesses. Vitamina with a roster of healthy smoothies and sandwiches, and Milk & Wood with gourmet gelato popsicles.
• With development proposals for the Diridon Area, the city is studying how to improve the "Confluence Area of Guadalupe River Park" to better prepare for growth. This includes potentially adding bocce courts, a dog park, skateboard park, cafe, outdoor stage, second bridge, measured walking loops, better lighting, more benches, and better transit access.
• The Children's Discovery Museum was awarded a $200,000 grant from the Super Bowl's "50 Fund" to help build a new 27,500 SQFT outdoor space scheduled to open in spring 2017.

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Latest renders for Railyard Place in San Jose

Insight Realty Co. has big plans for 10.6-acres of land on the periphery of Downtown San Jose at the intersection of Coleman Avenue and Highway 87. The site sits between the Downtown core and the San Jose Market Center shopping complex. This "Railyard Place" project would include 230,000 SQFT of office space along with 476 apartments in buildings as tall as eight-stories. The design makes the project look like it was built around old industrial buildings. Heck, they even threw in a fake smokestack.

One nice feature about Railyard Place is how it incorporates the Guadalupe River. It looks like it will connect to and augment existing trails. The developer is also committing to building a new $5 million bridge over the river to connect to Autumn Street, something that would likely benefit the whole area.

Insight Realty is hoping to get approvals by October and break ground immediately afterwards.

Source: SVBJ

The Alameda gets new crosswalk honoring LGBT heritage

Apparently interesting sidewalks and intersections are going up all over San Jose. The Alameda has a new rainbow-colored sidewalk near the Billy DeFrank LGBTQ Community Center, which is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year. These unique sidewalks make walking and driving around our neighborhoods a lot more interesting and safer (they slow down traffic for pedestrians).

I have to wonder how self-driving cars are going to handle these special crosswalks in the future, but we still have a while before we have to cross that bridge.

Source: SVBJ

Saturday Stats: San Jose ranked as the #10 best place to live in the US

U.S. News & World Report has gone through the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the United States and ranked them in terms of best places to live. The study looked at factors such as affordability, job prospects, and quality of life. Thousands of surveys were factored into the study as well as statistics from the Census Bureau, the FBI, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

San Jose came in a respectable 10th place on the list. The obvious criteria that prevented our city from being higher is affordability. Hit the source link below for the full list as well as more details.

Source: U.S. News & World Report, hat tip to Barclay Livker for sending this in

2016 U.S. News Best Places to Live Rankings – Top 10
Denver, CO
Austin, TX
Fayetteville, AR
Raleigh-Durham, NC
Colorado Springs, CO
Boise, ID
Seattle, WA
Washington, DC
San Francisco, CA
San Jose, CA

Lively street art installed in SoFA

If you have driven past the intersection of South 1st Street and San Salvador Street, you already know about the vivacious street art that now covers most of the intersection. The work is called "Symphony of Style; Color, Light, and Sound" and was done by the artist Scape Martinez. The print is 25 feet by 20 feet and is reflective of the architecture, nightlife, and creative energy in Downtown San Jose's SoFA district. If you haven't seen it yet, it is worthy of a detour the next time you are in the area.

Source: Phantom Galleries

San Jose's Signifyd raises $20 million

Signifyd is an e-commerce startup that specializes in fraud protection. They charge e-commerce companies a percentage fee in order to verify that purchases are coming from a legitimate source. Signifyd has protected $5.6 billion worth of transactions so far.

The company has just raised a $20 million Series B round, bringing their total amount of investment to $31 million. It's always great to see San Jose startups getting traction and the funding needed to continue to grow.

Signifyd is headquartered at 2590 North 1st Street.

Source: SVBJ

New 11-story hotel planned for "Uptown" San Jose

San Jose desperately needs more hotels, which increase our ability to host major events and bring more visitors into the area. Fortunately, a new hotel project has just been announced two blocks away from Santana Row and across the street from Valley Fair. The proposal is for 173 guest rooms in one 11-story building. The first floor would be the lobby and likely some retail or restaurant space, floors two through five would be parking, and floors 6 through 11 would have the rooms. One cool amenity is that there would be a restaurant and balcony on the 11th floor that overlooks the area.

While it would be nice if the building was taller and the parking was underground, you have to remember that this site currently has a gas station and we are well outside of Downtown. It sounds like a nice project for the area, especially since two possible brands are Hilton's Canopy and Choice Hotels' Cambria. Both are very contemporary high-end brands that feature nicely appointed rooms (think W Hotels). This has the potential of being really interesting inside.

Currently the project is in the city planning and approval process with a goal of starting construction in early 2017.

Source: SVBJ

Steve Wozniak plugged a San Jose event on Conan

I was really surprised to see Woz on last night's episode of Conan. He provided a few quick stories involving Steve Job, his famous pranks, and Apple's current situation with iPhone privacy. At the end, I was expecting him to plug a new book or movie--but instead he promoted a new comic-con in San Jose that premiers next weekend! It is called Silicon Valley Comic Con 2016 and runs from March 18th-20th at the San Jose Convention Center. To see Woz's plug along with his full segment, head over to the Team Coco website.