Come From Away Arrives in San Jose

A small Newfoundland town once opened its doors to thousands of stranded travelers, and that story of unexpected hospitality now reaches the stage in San Jose through a production mounted by neighbors who know something about building community. Playful People Productions stages the Tony-winning musical Come From Away from November 7 through 15 at the Historic Hoover Theatre, with two separate casts of local adult performers rotating through the run.

The show draws from real events on September 11, 2001, when 38 planes diverted to Gander’s airstrip and a community of roughly 9,000 residents suddenly hosted nearly 7,000 people from around the world. Music, shared meals, and an open bar helped bridge language and cultural differences during those days, turning an international crisis into a temporary global gathering. The musical earned the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical along with four Olivier Awards, including Best New Musical, and a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical. Local direction comes from Katie D'Arcey with vocal work by Stacy Levin, and some cast members step onto a stage for the first time under the company’s guidance.

Playful People Productions began in 2010 and has operated as a 501(c)3 nonprofit since 2017, building a space that welcomes performers of varied ages and experience levels while encouraging families to share the stage. The organization follows Positive Discipline practices and regularly pairs children with parents, aunts, uncles, or grandparents in its productions. This Come From Away run continues that approach with adult participants drawn from the local area, supported in part by a Cultural Affairs grant from the City of San José and by SVCreates in partnership with the County of Santa Clara. Randy Adams, longtime managing director at TheatreWorks on the Peninsula and an original producer of the show through Junkyard Dog Productions, connects the production to its earlier development.

Performances unfold at the Historic Hoover Theatre, 1635 Park Avenue, a renovated former school gym in the Rose Garden neighborhood that serves as a city landmark and seats between roughly 100 and 200 depending on configuration. Free parking sits nearby. Yellow Cast shows run Saturday November 7 at 1:00 PM, Sunday November 8 at 1:00 PM, Wednesday November 11 at 7:00 PM, Friday November 13 at 7:00 PM, and Saturday November 14 at 7:00 PM. Blue Cast shows take Saturday November 7 at 7:00 PM, Sunday November 8 at 7:00 PM, Thursday November 12 at 7:00 PM, Saturday November 14 at 1:00 PM, and Sunday November 15 at 1:00 PM. Tickets cost $25 for youth age 12 and under, $28 for students age 13 to 17, and $32 for adults, with possible fees.

For tickets or additional details, visit www.PlayfulPeople.org/tickets or call (408) 878-5362.

San Jose Housing Prices Ease While Inventory Climbs

Homebuyers watching San Jose real estate saw single-family prices drop 2.4 percent from a year earlier in August, settling at $1.8 million according to Homes.com data. National prices rose 1.3 percent over the same stretch, Los Angeles edged up 1.5 percent, and San Francisco jumped 8.6 percent. Sales volume in San Jose also fell 8.3 percent, nearly double the national decline, while San Francisco recorded a 9.8 percent increase in transactions.

Nigel Hughes of CoStar and Homes.com attributed the divergence largely to supply and demand differences. San Jose carried more higher-end homes on the market with fewer buyers competing for them. San Francisco, by contrast, held limited inventory in the neighborhoods attracting highly paid AI workers. “I just don’t think the intensity is anywhere near as strong down in San Jose,” Hughes said. Russell Hancock of Joint Venture Silicon Valley linked the softer hiring environment, partly tied to AI shifts, to reduced urgency in the local housing market even as technology continues generating substantial wealth at the top end.

Average earnings per technology job in the Bay Area reached roughly $450,000, according to comments from Beacon Economics’ Christopher Thornberg at San Jose State University’s Economic Summit earlier this year. Northern California AI companies raised $317 billion in venture funding this year, more than 11 times the amount in 2022. That capital has concentrated among top earners, enabling some San Francisco buyers to make all-cash offers that outpace mortgage-dependent purchasers. San Jose has not yet shown the same intensity. Hughes described the city as offering weaker demand and greater choice among higher-end properties.

Inventory in San Jose rose 9.3 percent from a year earlier while new listings increased 21.5 percent. After years of tight competition, the additional options have given buyers more room to negotiate and more leverage overall. The pattern sits against continued strength in Silicon Valley’s broader tech economy, with wealth creation flowing unevenly across the region’s housing markets.

Source: SVBJ

 

New Firearm Rules Land in California

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed 10 gun bills on Saturday, September 26. Starting January 1, 2029, Senate Bill 948 will require anyone applying for a Firearm Safety Certificate will have to finish a course of at least four hours in the prior year. The course includes classroom work on storage, private sales, straw purchases, and use-of-force law, plus live-fire exercises on a range. Current owners keeping guns they already hold are not pulled into that class. People who move to California with firearms will need a safety certificate within 180 days of arrival, beginning in 2028. Holders of a valid concealed-carry permit, or anyone who finished a CCW course in the previous three years, are written out of the new class requirement.

Two other bills in the stack will matter at the courthouse and the evidence locker. Senate Bill 1220 adds a 10-year ban on possessing a gun after a conviction for stripping serial-number information that police use to trace weapons. Assembly Bill 1743 lets cities and universities request Department of Justice data on guns recovered in criminal investigations so researchers can map how those guns traveled. The California Rifle and Pistol Association opposed all three, calling the class an extra tax on ownership, the 10-year ban broader than public safety requires, and the data-sharing bill a privacy risk after a 2022 breach of carry-permit records. Gun-control groups, including Giffords, treated the package as closed loopholes and better training.

San Jose and Santa Clara County already run their own gun-violence caseloads: suicides, robberies, threats, and seizures that show up in local police and DA work. None of the signed bills is a city ordinance. They will still land at every dealer from Berryessa to Almaden once the Department of Justice writes the regulations and certified instructors line up range time. Expect legal challenges as unfortunately California’s last round of ammunition-background rules is still in court.

Source: San Jose Inside

Spark Social Opens Outdoor Food Truck Park Near Diridon Station

Residents and visitors seeking a new outdoor gathering spot near the SAP Center now have one that mixes rotating food trucks with games, music, and family areas. Spark Social launched its San Jose location on October 9 at 140 S Montgomery Blvd in the Creekside District, just a short walk from Diridon Station. The project represented a roughly $1 million investment and is expected to support 100 to 150 jobs across vendors, on-site staff, and administrative roles.

The site spans about 75,000 square feet and hosts 15 to 20 food trucks on a typical day, including around 10 permanent vendors, alongside a full bar. An 18-hole putting course, fire pits, live music, and a large LED screen for broadcasting Sharks and 49ers games round out the offerings. Hours run from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and extend until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. Entry remains free, with parking available nearby via ParkMobile.

Founder Carlos Muela noted the drawn-out permitting process delayed an earlier spring target and then a potential July opening, yet community interest stayed high. “People are just ecstatic,” he said. “It took a lot longer than we expected. It built that anticipation from San Jose.” Programming includes themed nights such as a Filipino night market, country music events, Dia de los Muertos activities, Halloween programming, and a dog costume contest. Nearly half the space leans toward family use, with a Clubhouse that includes a playground, sensory garden, and play areas.

The venue sits on land tied to Google’s larger Downtown West project, which originally envisioned millions of square feet of office space, thousands of housing units, and extensive public amenities but has not yet begun construction. Jamestown has activated portions of the district with other businesses including Hapa’s Brewing, Local Color, Good Karma, Found SJ, and Bay Padel. Spark Social joins that effort while emphasizing local vendors.

For details on the current truck lineup, events, or private bookings, visit visitsparksocial.com.

Source: SVBJ

Symphony San Jose Brings Heroes, Villains and Costumes to the California Theatre This October

October arrives with a ready-made family outing when Symphony San Jose stages Symphonic Spooktacular at the historic California Theatre in Downtown San Jose. Conductor Peter Jaffe leads two performances on Saturday, October 24 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, October 25 at 2:30 p.m., guiding the orchestra through a program that balances bold, triumphant themes with darker, mischievous scores.

The music ranges from Rossini’s William Tell Overture and Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries to Gounod’s Funeral March of a Marionette, Márquez’s Conga del Fuego Nuevo and Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, along with familiar themes from Batman and Spiderman. Vocalist Bianca Orsi joins the orchestra as the concert explores the classic clash of champions and foes in full symphonic color.

Those who want to lean into the season can enter the on-stage costume contest for a chance at spooktacular prizes. Anyone who prefers to skip the costume can still take part by watching the parade of dressed-up attendees. Special half-price youth tickets remain available for guests 17 and under when purchased alongside an adult seat, making the evening accessible for the whole household.

Convenient parking sits at the city-owned garage a block and a half away on San Carlos Street, with entrances on Second and Third. Single tickets range from $35 to $125 and go on sale soon through the Symphony San Jose box office.

This Halloween weekend concert adds another lively option to the growing list of family-friendly events that keep Downtown San Jose entertaining well into the fall.

Tickets and additional details are available at www.symphonysanjose.org or by calling 408.286.2600.

Prologis Files for a 99-Megawatt Box at Charcot and Zanker

Prologis asked San Jose for a special-use permit to knock down five industrial buildings at 326 Charcot Avenue and put a three-story, 514,000-square-foot data center in their place, plus 30,000 square feet of office. The file is SP26-026, dated September 10. Design power is 99 megawatts, with an on-site substation and a generator yard. If the city and the state Public Utilities Commission both sign off, construction could start in the first quarter of 2028, run about 22 months, and put the plant online around 2030. Nothing is entitled yet.

The grid piece sits at PG&E’s Trimble substation on Component Drive, between North First Street and Orchard Parkway. Prologis would pay for the switchgear expansion and two transmission lines into the site, including a second independent route so the yard does not lean as hard on diesel. The company said it intends to enroll in San Jose Clean Energy’s Total Clean Energy product, or an equivalent, aiming at 100 percent carbon-free supply. PG&E’s statewide data-center queue hit 12.71 gigawatts at the end of June, more than double the March figure. In February the city said the utility was lining up hookups for a dozen unnamed large San Jose projects by 2030.

North San Jose already holds Google, Cisco, and Apple campuses and a growing stack of compute buildings. City tax math on a finished data center has been quoted in the $3 million to $7 million a year range for utilities and property. Water and ratepayer bill fights have stopped similar projects in other Bay Area towns. San Jose has so far treated the use as industrial reuse on land that was never going to become townhouses. A public hearing is required. The PUC still has to bless the Trimble work.

City data-center list: https://www.sanjoseca.gov/your-government/departments-offices/planning-building-code-enforcement/planning-division/data-center-and-other-large-energy-use-projects

Source: The Mercury News

Valley Health Center Opens on Bascom

Santa Clara County opened Valley Health Center San José-Campbell on Monday, September 28, at 1410 South Bascom Avenue, on the San Jose–Campbell line next to the VTA Bascom light-rail stop. The 10-story, 230,000-square-foot outpatient building holds more than 200 exam rooms. It is the largest clinic in the county system. Services include adult medicine, family medicine, pediatric primary and specialty care, adult and pediatric urgent care, OB-GYN and maternal-fetal medicine, dental, behavioral health, pharmacy, lab, and imaging. Two older San Jose clinics fold into this one roof.

The county bought the converted commercial site from HSRE-PMB San Jose in January for $340 million, financed with a 30-year revenue bond. Officials said owning instead of leasing will save about $112 million over three decades. Construction ran four years. A 600-space garage sits on the lot. More than 11,000 households are within walking distance; about 90,000 people live a 10-minute drive away. Apartments bookend the block. The Urban Village map already wanted density here and putting the biggest public clinic on that corner is the most practical version of that map.

Weekday clinic hours run 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Adult and pediatric urgent care stay open until 9:30 p.m. on weekdays and until 5 p.m. on weekends. County clinics already see 1.3 million visits a year. This building is the bet that wait times drop when primary care, dental, and after-hours urgent care share an elevator and a light-rail platform.

Hours and a service list live at https://www.scvh.org/sjc

Source: San Jose Spotlight

SJSU Puts $5.5 Million Into a Shared Home at Excite Ballpark

San Jose State Athletics closed more than $5.5 million in private gifts for baseball facilities at Excite Ballpark, the old Municipal Stadium the San Jose Giants have used since 1988. That sum sits inside a larger athletics haul of more than $19 million since July 1, a department record according to senior deputy athletic director Scott MacDonald. The cycle is still early. The baseball money pays for a dedicated Spartan clubhouse and coaches’ offices, a team weight room, laundry, and access to bullpens, batting cages, and the complex’s sports-medicine rooms. Work for the university side is slated to finish in 2027, with the new clubhouse aimed at April.

The Giants and Diamond Baseball Holdings already funded most of the park-wide upgrades under a 25-year lease that runs through 2050 and a capital package of about $20 million meant to meet Professional Development League standards. City Hall agreed to reimburse up to $5 million of the field and dugout work over seven years starting in fiscal 2027-28. SJSU’s check will turn the Single-A yard into a shared college-and-pro plant.

Brad Sanfilippo’s roster will practice and play home games on the same grass the Giants use in summer. The arrangement also opens the gates for youth camps and, if the conference calendar lines up, a Mountain West Baseball Championship.

Private donors, not a new bond measure, moved this one. MacDonald tied the total to years of relationship work. The field stays in San Jose and The Spartans get a locker that belongs to them.

More on the project: https://sjsuspartans.com/news/2026/09/23/more-than-dollar55-million-raised-to-transform-the-future-of-spartan-baseball

San Jose Wishlist - Halloween in the Park (Part XVIII)

As Halloween approaches, it is time to resurrect one of my favorite wishlist items for San Jose: "Halloween in the Park."

Halloween is my favorite holiday of the year. It's the one day where you get to interact with your neighbors and the wider community. The level of creativity in decorations and costumes is also the most eclectic and interesting out of all the holidays for me--whether that's for trick-or-treating, Halloween parties, or work events.

In October it's tradition for The San Jose Blog have a wish-list post for Halloween in the Park. The idea is to build on the momentum that Christmas in the Park brings to San Jose each year and create something of similar scale for the month of October. A lot of the infrastructure such as wiring, lighting, and booths might even be able to be shared between the events. The goal would be to make Downtown San Jose the epicenter of October Halloween experiences, much as it is today with Christmas in the Park.

Below you will find brainstorming ideas we have collected for this concept so far over the years. Please have a look and provide your feedback and suggestions in the comments or on X. Thanks!

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The largest draw to Downtown San Jose for many years now has been Christmas in the Park. It has continued to grow year after year and brings in visitors from all over the Bay Area. It's economic impact is substantial and helps keep many Downtown businesses and restaurants alive.

What would you think about a similar event for Halloween? Picture Downtown lit up in orange and purple with elaborate Halloween displays assembled by local artists. Perhaps infrastructure could even be shared with Christmas in the Park (e.g. retail booths). A strong event in October would help maintain traffic between the summer months and Christmas in the Park. Here are the ideas we have so far:

• Animated Halloween Displays
• Created by local artists
• Analogous to the Christmas displays that attract many families during Christmas in the Park (almost half a million visitors)
• Family friendly so that everyone can enjoy it (PG/PG13, perhaps around the same level as Great America's Halloween decorations)
• Halloween Lighting
• Orange, purple, and green LED lighting on trees
• May be possible to use programmable LED lighting that can go from Halloween colors to Christmas colors with the push of a button, allowing the lights to stay up for Christmas in the Park as well and reducing setup/take-down costs.
• Halloween Food
• Booths with candied apples, chocolates, candy, pumpkin seeds, etc.
• Food trucks
• Trick-or-treating station - a free piece of candy to anyone wearing a costume any day in October (could also be used to hand out promotional flyers for Downtown events/businesses/resources)
• Retail Booths selling Halloween items, for example:
• Artwork (paintings, glass pumpkins, etc.)
• Home decor/crafts like candles
• Light-up hats/necklaces/bracelets
• Costumes
• Zombie/Halloween make-up station 
• Halloween-themed Carnival Games
• Pirates of Emerson and Candlelighters (Fremont) do a good job of providing family-friendly games themed around Halloween
• A handful of children's rides could also be added to the Paseo and reused for Christmas in the Park
• Interactive Art
• Subzero-style, but with a Halloween spin.
• Halloween-themed video game kiosks and/or arcades
• Pumpkins
• Instead of the sponsored Christmas trees in Christmas in the Park, how about decorated Pumpkins (can even be Styrofoam so there is no mess/decay)?
• Pumpkin carving station for families. 
• Pumpkin carving contest.
• Costumed Entertainers
• Walking around the area, not necessarily scaring people but adding to the ambiance and providing photo opportunities for families
• Haunts / Mazes
• Would be ideal if these were nearby, perhaps in vacant retails spaces, surface parking lots, the San Jose Convention Center tent, or at SJSU.
• Could partners with one of the established San Jose haunt providers such as the Winchester Mystery House or The Bernal SCREAM.
• Potential Events
• Zombie Crawl / 5k Run
• Día De Los Muertos Events (already quite a few today)
• Halloween/Día De Los Muertos Bike Party
• Horror Movie Trivia Contest
• Weekly horror movie screening (perhaps in the Circle of Palms area?)
• Costume Ball
• Pet costume contests and pet-friendly events

Inspirations:

• Winchester Mystery House Unhinged
• Candle Lighters
• Pirates of Emerson
• The Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze (photos below)

Goddard School Stakes Two San Jose Corners for More Than 300 Childcare Slots

The Goddard School is lining up two San Jose campuses that would add at least 46 jobs and more than 300 licensed childcare seats, one on The Alameda near Diridon and one on Cottle Road in South San Jose. Both projects recycle empty retail boxes rather than punching new holes in residential blocks.

The 821 Alameda site will carry the name The Goddard School of Diridon. Plans call for converting a 12,690-square-foot former CVS into 12 classrooms for as many as 180 children, ages six weeks through 5, plus about 25 staff jobs. Two outdoor playgrounds and an activity lab would cover roughly 12,943 square feet of the old parking field. A Goddard representative told the Silicon Valley Business Journal the school is still in development and pointed to a 2027 opening. The stretch already holds Whole Foods, Chipotle, Anytime Fitness, and apartments at Avalon Cahill Park and 787 The Alameda, a short walk from Caltrain’s Diridon Station and SAP Center. For families who work Downtown San Jose or ride the train, the location is the point.

South San Jose would take a slice of the long-vacant Orchard Supply Hardware building at 5651 Cottle Road. City permits describe a 9,800-square-foot conversion with classrooms and playgrounds for 144 children and 21 employees. Dollinger Properties bought the 4.3-acre lot at auction in 2025. The larger project would also install a Sprouts Farmers Market of about 25,100 square feet and two unleased retail bays. A planning hearing was on the City Council calendar in mid-September. Hours listed in earlier filings ran Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Neighbors include Orchard Town and Country shops such as Baskin-Robbins and Castillo’s.

Goddard already runs Bay Area schools in San Francisco, San Ramon, and Brentwood. Combined, the two San Jose rooms would put 324 infants through preschoolers into licensed care and give the franchise its first foothold in the city proper. Childcare capacity is not a luxury item here. Putting it next to a grocery store and next to a transit station is the kind of reuse that makes empty big boxes useful again. Enrollment and job postings will follow construction. Goddard’s locator page is at www.goddardschool.com.

Source: SVBJ