Flashy housing tower expected to break ground within a few months in Downtown San Jose

Orchard Residential is planning to break ground on 540 high-rise residential homes within months at 409 South Second Street. This is the site of the former Bo Town restaurant in the SoFA District.

The design for the tower is stunning, featuring hundreds of staggered balconies and built-in planters to make the building look like a vertical forest. If the final product ends up looking anything like the renders below, it will be one of the most unique projects in Silicon Valley.

The location is also excellent as it is right in the middle of San Jose's arts district. Residents would be able to easily walk to restaurants, bars, galleries, and theaters. 

Source: The Mercury News, aphelion2100 from Skyscraper City

Samsung is launching new AI-focused smartphones in San Jose

Samsung is gearing up to launch their newest flagship devices on January 17th at their North American headquarters, right here in San Jose. The theme is "Galaxy AI is coming." 

It's not entirely clear how Samsung will spice up their lineup but is easy to speculate that they will have components similar to ChatGPT or Google Bard. The new phones could also have new hardware to accelerate AI functionality or apply AI to phone use itself (e.g. predicting what you are going to do and setting up automatic routines). Whatever happens, they'll be filming here.

Samsung's North American Headquarters is located in North San Jose at 3655 North First street.

Source: The Mercury News

Downtown San Jose could be getting a new pet store/hotel/daycare

The "Workingman's Emporium" retail store in Downtown San Jose at North First and Devine Street has been bought by a pet services entrepreneur. The plan is now to convert the 7,900 SQFT property into a care facility and retail store for pets. This would include pet boarding, daycare, and grooming. 

With so many new homes and residents in Downtown San Jose, this will be a major amenity for pet owners that is just a short walk from most major Downtown residential buildings. 

No ETA was provided but given the owner already has has experience in this space and another store that is currently open (Pet Villa in Santa Clara), I wouldn't expect it to be a long wait before the grand opening. 

Source: SiliconValley.com 

Updated photos of the tallest buildings in Santa Clara

Santa Clara is growing up. The Tasman East area at the border with North San Jose and Alviso is going to have several new mixed-use residential towers go live well before Super Bowl 60. Gillynova from Skyscraper City has a ton of new photos of the development in the area.

These are the first residential high-rises in Santa Clara (besides a SCU dorm) and feature surprising amenities like rooftop pools. The towers are 238 and 219 feet tall. There is also a new midrise housing building which you can see below.

There are plans for even more towers in the future courtesy of Related Co, who also wants to build hotels, offices, and an entertainment complex right in front of Levi's Stadium.

Source: gillynova from Skyscraper City

Iconic San Jose tower will be converting offices to homes

Demand for office space is low and housing is high, which will likely lead to several office to housing conversions throughout San Jose. One of the most interesting proposals is by the owners of the historic "Bank of Italy" tower in Downtown San Jose. The building was San Jose's original high rise, and the company that built it eventually became Bank of America. It was actually the tallest building between Los Angeles and San Francisco between 1926 and 1970... 44 years.

The latest proposal is to convert the 13-story office building to between 125 and 150 homes across at least 11 of the floors, in addition to doing significant interior and exterior renovations. The attic below the spire and cupola would also be used to support the residential component (perhaps as amenity space). The plan also references a 1,400 SQFT lower penthouse and 900 SQFT upper penthouse. It's not clear exactly where those would be--if they are part of the tower component above the attic or the terraces along the side.

Dining and retail spaces are also earmarked for the project, including one with a 2nd floor terrace which you can see in the 2nd and last images below. I'm reminded of the old Scott's Seafood location. This could be a really unique spot for a restaurant overlooking Fountain Alley and First Street!

It also looks like they want to add some dynamic lighting elements to the top of the tower, which would be a nice bonus for the project. Hopefully they can get this completed before the market shifts again.

Source: The Mercury News

San Jose 2023 crime stats fare well among Bay Area piers

San Jose has been a relatively safe city for many decades, and at certain points was the safest big city in the United States. The final crime stats for 2023 are out and they bode well for San Jose.

In terms of homicides, San Jose came in at 36 for 2023 (this compares to 35 in 2022 and 31 in 20221). This is much less than San Francisco with 53 despite having 15% fewer people. If you look at Oakland, the stat disparity is even wider. Oakland came in at 126 homicides last year, 3.5 times more than San Jose despite having half the population.

Part of the reason why the rate is so low is that San Jose's homicide unit solves nearly 100% of all cases, something that is very rare in cities of a million people.

Source: NBC Bay Area

New laws in 2024 impacting San Jose

Another year, another round of revised legislation. San Jose Spotlight has put together a list of new changes for 2024. Included are updated worker protections for recreational cannabis users, increased fast-food minimum wages to $20/hr, and decreased water consumption for new buildings.

One significant change is Senate Bill 43, which expands the people eligible for conservatorship to include those that are unable to provide for their personal safety, medical care, food, clothing, or shelter due to serious mental illness or substance abuse. I'm speculating that would apply to a significant percentage of the homeless population in San Jose, giving leaders more flexibility in getting people the care they need.

For the full list, click the source link below.

Source: San Jose Spotlight

Welcome to 2024!

The last time I did a New Year's post was in 2020. San Jose growth has been sort of on pause since then--but this is the year I think we'll start to see some real change. I'll say the same message I said back then. Hopefully we will see our city grow in every way possible this year! 

If you think 2024 sounds like the future, you're not the only one. I asked Dalle-3 to generate an image for "welcome to 2024 San Jose" and this is what I got 😅