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On Saturday, hundreds of South Bay residents had a glimpse of a future including Google in downtown San Jose at the technology giant's first technology community meeting since the presentation of its vision of 39, a gigantic new campus near Diridon Station.
Food trucks crisscrossed the Arena Green West Park offering free lunches while children ran everywhere with painted faces and people on an ephemeral stand handed flowers with balloons. An overview, perhaps, of what the region could become in a few years if Google gets the approvals needed to move forward.
The Mountain View-based company unveiled Thursday plans to build about 6.5 million square feet of office space on a large campus of thousands of residential units, about 500,000 square feet of commercial space, hotel space, cultural and artistic, as well as greenery. This is the most detailed opinion to date on the project, which should materialize, at least in part, on the mainland, once destined to become a baseball stadium for the Oakland A.
His unveiling has attracted a lot of attention.
"When I arrived here, I marveled at the rate of participation in the community," said Jonathan Martinez, a resident of San Jose and a member of the Station Neighborhood Advisory Group, who is working to rebadess the plan. zoning and development of the area around Diridon Station. . "The other meetings were small and did not have as much participation, but it's amazing."
Representatives of Google in two white tents explained in detail the company's development framework for a campus of more than 8 million square feet that they hoped to exploit on 60 acres around Diridon station. In a tent, Google employees were next to billboards filled with information about the proposed project.
In another project, the company's executives and its urban design consultant, SiteLab, offered a guided presentation outlining plans for a large campus with large office buildings, dotted with parks, plazas, buildings, and Apartments and punctuated cultural and artistic corridors.
It was the second time in three days that Google executives were giving the presentation, but the mood in Saturday's sunny park was drastically different from that of the first meeting, which was held on Thursday. at City Hall.
During this public meeting, members of the community protested, interrupting the presentation several times when their frustrations evaporated. Some community members said they were excited about the project, but many others wondered about Google and municipal leaders if they could afford to live in San Jose after Google officially entered the community. downtown.
But on Saturday, there were no demonstrations, and locals wrote their thoughts on sticky notes pinned to billboards, generally proclaiming their enthusiasm for the project, offering suggestions for the technician technological and asking questions.
"The excitement was strong because it was an exciting and generous plan," said Scott Knies, executive director of the San Jose Downtown Association. "It's generous with San Jose with open space and with spaces for artists. No one else would lead with that.
Indeed, many residents said that squares and open spaces were what excited them the most.
"We walk a lot in the city center. Being able to roam the parks and squares instead of crossing buildings is really exciting for us, "said Shirley Bell, a downtown resident.
Community concerns
Some Saturday residents also had concerns, including housing issues, which was a major concern for many.
Until now, Google has revealed little detail about the exact number of homes that would be created on campus and how much would be considered affordable.
"We'll hear more about this as spring approaches," said Alexa Arenas, Google's director of real estate development, to promise a hundred people Saturday morning. "We are not there yet, which is quite natural for what we are doing."
The current specific plan for the Diridon station area provides for about 2,800 homes and Google wants to see a minimum of 3,000 homes built on its land, which is about a third of the potential of the house, which is about a third of the surface of the station of Diridon.
The company partnered with international developer Lendlease to build almost everything, except offices, in most of its mixed-use developments in the Bay Area, including San Jose, Sunnyvale and Mountain View.
Google also announced a $ 1 billion commitment for housing earlier this year, aimed at reviving local affordable housing projects in the short term, although some details about how the investment will be deployed remain unclear.
Bell, the downtown resident, said her main concern was parking. Google's vision relies heavily on the idea that residents and workers use public transit and walk to work in the downtown core.
"I understand the concept of people wanting to live and work in the city center, and it works for us because we walk everywhere, but we also have to leave the city center and how are we doing," said Bell. "My concern about the reduced parking criteria of 0.4 (parking spaces per unit) is that it could have a negative impact on people's quality of life."
Martinez worries about the possible decline of buildings in development. City officials in San Jose recently raised the height limits for buildings in and around Diridon's downtown core, representing 8.6 million square feet of development potential in the region.
"We need to be able to go higher and people will have to accept this as a way of life here in San Jose," he said. "It's a big city right now, so the transit centers around the BART stations need to be twice as high as they think."
Google did not specify the height of its buildings. These details will likely become clearer when the company makes its official application to the city in October. However, project officials said Google was considering taking advantage of the increase in height limits.
And while Google is developing these types of details of its plan and package of benefits for the community that will come with a future development agreement with the city, the company also continues to develop other key details, but complex, around the project.
Of these, the main one is whether the company owned by Alphabet Inc. will enter into an agreement to purchase a set of parking lots near the SAP Center providing parking for hockey fans when the San Sharks Jose will play at the arena.
The Sharks signed a contract with the city of San Jose to provide parking near the arena. Google will have to find an agreement with the sports team before they can buy three essential car parks in full development phase. A negotiation, according to the leaders of the city, conceded, will be complicated.
The San Jose City Council is expected to vote on Google's official project proposal by the fall of 2020 and Google officials have announced they will continue to organize community information events here. the. Municipal leaders say that community involvement is now essential.
"Most of the development projects in the city will be fragmented," said Raul Peralez, board member of downtown San Jose. "We can plan large areas, but as development happens, it really comes in one at a time. … But here we have the opportunity to help design, make contributions and create an entire domain. "
Contact Janice Bitters at [email protected] or follow @JaniceBitters on Twitter.
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