Wednesday, November 4, 2015

New Proposed High Rises Would be San Jose's Tallest Buildings!

When a 1.4 acre piece of land across from City Hall was sold to a Chinese developer, many urbanists were hoping for (perhaps even demanding) an office tower to be built in this prime space. Others (myself included) would be happy with any sort of building there--including another residential tower--to replace the mostly vacant chunk of land next to San Jose's most iconic building. Well, it turns out we are getting the best of everything in this latest Downtown San Jose project!

The "SJSC Towers" would consist of not one, but two 295-foot tall towers. That would make them the two tallest building in San Jose. The one on the west would be a 28-story residential building with 350 condos. The eastern building would house 344,157 SQFT of office space in a 20-story building with soaring ceilings. The ground floor would have around 20,000 SQFT of retail, nearly equivalent in size to the San Pedro Square Market.

The residential component would have high-end amenities, including a skydeck and community facilities on the entire top floor. It even looks to me like it might have a swimming pool, or at very least a hot tub, 280 feet towards the sky! Now that would be a unique amenity.

The architecture is anticipated to raise the bar for San Jose. The towers will have the same design language but not be clones of one another. They will also compliment the architecture of City Hall across the street.

Needless to say, this has tremendous potential. I can't wait to see the initial designs and hope this will get fast-tracked into reality.

Source: SVBJ





7 comments:

  1. I am very excited for this project. Most importantly, this project's implication to expand Downtown's "core" to the east will eventually lead us outside of the FAA restriction zone (west of 10th Street). Once our core extends past 10th street to the East, then sky's the limit for building height.

    It will take at least a decade or two to fill up the sore spots along Santa Clara out to 10th street before we will see the supertalls go up in Downtown SJ, but these two towers will be a great step towards that.

    Go East, young men!!!!

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  2. Please tell me that isn't the finished architecture of the 2 buildings...

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    1. Ahhh... got the last sentence o the article... we have yet to see the initial designs... Phew! (Big sigh of relief!)

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    2. LOL, those are called massing drawings. Design draft is the next step.

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  3. 6 levels of parking for a building that'll be a few minutes away from BART, light rail, and BRT?

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    1. Until we have public transit that is easily accessible to most of the population in Silicon Valley (or fully self-driving cars), I think this is a necessary evil.

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  4. why cant San Jose begin to allow buildings over 30 stories to be built east of the City Hall on Santa Clara Street

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