San Jose's Frontier Village Remnants

Did you know San Jose once had a Western-themed theme park that opened in the 1960s? A Palo Alto entrepreneur built Frontier Village for $2 million after being inspired at Disneyland. It was built on about 60 acres near Hayes Mansion.

Some of the highlights were staged gunfights, saloons, and several rides including a roller coaster, a Ferris wheel, railroad, canoe rides, and horse-drawn carriages. An expansion was planned in 1977, but neighbors complained and the San Jose City Council denied the plans. Unfortunately, due to this and further competition from Marriott's Great America the park closed in 1980.

However, you can find all sorts of remnants and tributes for the theme park at Edenvale Garden Park across from Hayes Mansion. This includes five scale buildings placed where their original structures were and a play structure that is themed after the park's railroad. Next time you are visiting Hayes Mansion, it's worth a detour to check out the park and see how many references you can find related to a shuttered theme park.

Source: SJtoday

Communications Hill expanding again with Phases 3 and 4

Communications Hill is a large master planned neighborhood in Central San Jose. It already has thousands of single family and multi-family homes and is famous for "the stairs," a unique urban hike with 252 stepps. (last two images below).

New development permits are seeking the construction of an additional 800+ multi-family units and commercial space in a site bound by Altino Boulevard, Hillsdale, and the Union Pacific railroad. KB Home South Bay would be the developer and it would span 140 acres.

Phases 3 and 4 of Communications Hill are supposed to include a mix of single-family detached homes, townhouses, and flats. The current scope of the project would include 505 homes, hundreds of apartment's across several five and six-story buildings, up to 32,873 of commercial/retail space, and 16,215 SQFT of amenity space.

There is already quite a bit of traffic along 87 due to Communication Hill so it will be interesting to see how well the expansion can be accommodated.

Source: SF YIMBY

Urban Catalyst moving forward with two high-rise residential towers near San Jose City Hall, updates plans and renders

One of Downtown San Jose's most ambitious developers and proponents has acquired the final puzzle piece needed to built its two towers named Echo and Icon. They purchased a parking lot on North Fourth Street across from Miro that completes the space necessary for their project. 

Echo is a 27-story residential tower with 415 homes. Icon was supposed to be a 22-story office building, but given the state of the market they are planning to convert it to a 26-story residential tower with 650 units instead.

Below are the updated renders envisioning Icon as a residential tower as opposed to office. Icon is the tower on the left bordering Santa Clara Street. It would replace a space previously used as a gas station along Downtown San Jose's main street.

There is no estimated timeline, but I hope Echo and Icon come sooner rather than later. Injecting over 1,000 homes into the central part of Downtown San Jose with easy access to transit (including a future BART station) would help accelerate its transition to a thriving 24x7 urban center. 

Source: SVBJ, SF YIMBY

Previous Renders:

What does Google's generative AI think San Jose will look like in 2050?

Several months ago I asked ChatGPT what San Jose would look like in the future. The results were interesting but pretty bland.

Today I tried the same experiment with Google's competitor to ChatGPT, Bard. The images generated were a lot more vivid and colorful (literally).

Of these four options, which one do you think San Jose is most likely to look like in 2050?

 

1.) Still relatively flat with a few standout skyscrapers

2.) Futuristic, dense, and colorful metropolis

3.) Minor iterative improvement over what we have today

4.) Post-apocalyptic wasteland (but we did have skyscrapers at one point)

San Jose Roots: Celebrating our Heritage at the San Pedro Square Market today

Today there is a special event happening at the San Pedro Square Market today from 1-4pm with rare access to the Gonzales/Peralta Adobe and the Carmela & Thomas Fallon House. San Jose Roots is a celebration of our city's cultural diversity and is hosted by History San Jose, Mosaic, and The San Pedro Square Market.

The event will feature cultural performances, hands-on activities, and community booths from local and cultural organizations. There will also be free tours of the Gonzales/Peralta Adobe and the Carmela & Thomas Fallon House. This does not happen often, so it would be an ideal opportunity to see these two historic buildings.

The Gonzales/Peralta Adobe is situated in the middle of the San Pedro Square Market and is the oldest building in San Jose. The Carmela & Thomas Fallon House is across the street and represents an early Victorian home. Thomas Fallon was mayor of San Jose from 1859-1860.

In order to provide more space for the festivities, St. John Street will be closed in front of The San Pedro Square Market.

South FIRST FRIDAY Nov 3rd, 2023 in #DTSJ #ArtwalkSJ

South FIRST FRIDAYS is back today will all new exhibits across multiple galleries in three different districts. Everything is open from at least 5-10pm. Participating venues include ANNO DOMINI, the Institute of Contemporary Art, KALEID Gallery, Works San Jose, the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, the SoFA Market, MACLA, Art Ark Gallery, MACHU PICCHU, Natural Do Salon, 1Culture, and Chopsticks Alley Gallery. 

There are a few special items worth noting for this month. You can go to the California Theatre and watch a free sneak peak of The Barber of Seville at 5:45pm, 6:30pm, 7:15pm, and 8pm. 1Culture is handing out Halloween treats for kids. Also, Phantom Galleries is presenting a special Gianfranco Paolozzi solo exhibition at The Pierce and the artist will be in attendance from 5-9pm.

It all goes down today, November 3rd. As usual admission is free and all ages are welcome. Click here for a preview of featured art! Below is a map with all of the galleries to check out across all three different districts.

"McTerrorsaurus" ceramics by Kurt Salinas at Chopsticks Gallery

110 townhomes proposed in North San Jose at existing office site

As the office market struggles to recover, project after project has been pivoting to housing. The latest proposal is coming from SummerHill Homes and would involve replacing a two-story office building with 110 townhomes on a 5.1-acre site at 90 East Tasman Drive. 

This is a great location in the middle of the tech world's "Golden Triangle." It's in front of a VTA Light Rail stop and is a few stations away from either Levi's Stadium to the west or Milpitas BART and The Great Mall to the east.

While townhomes in many ways would certainly be an improvement over the current 1980s era office buildings at the current site, it's still a far cry from what Santa Clara is doing off of Tasman just over 1 mile away. That site is also 5-acres, but instead of townhomes it features a 23-story apartment building with 509 apartment and 191 senior housing units in a secondary tower. That is literally seven times the density of the San Jose proposal (see below).

The land here is extremely valuable. It would make sense to move a bit beyond townhomes at this point in North San Jose, especially with such great access to existing transit networks. 

Source: The Mercury News, TheRegistry

Willow Glen Christmas Trolley Rides

It's getting to be that time of year again! Willow Glen is doing a holiday trolley ride through both the commercial and residential parts of Willow Glen to view all of the holiday decorations. The trolly is an old fashioned cable car that seats up to 32 people.

The rides take place from December 7-10 and December 14-21 from 5:15pm to 9pm. Each ride takes about 30 minutes and costs $20 for kids and $40 for Adults. The trolley boards in front of Bank of America at 1245 Lincoln Avenue. There is also plenty of free public parking in the Bank of America lot, courtesy of the Willow Glen Business Association.

If you're wondering why I'm posting this so early, well many of the dates have already sold out. Now would be the time to book your holiday trolly ride over here.