Photos of One South Market Barricades

The One South Market residential high-rise continues to move forward! There are now perimeter barricades all the way around the development site and they created a staging area on northbound San Pedro Street between Santa Clara and Post. I can't wait to see this building start to rise later this year.

Hat tip to Jeffrey Arko for sending in the photos!

Meridian Mixed-Use Retail Tenants

It looks like some of the retail for the Meridian Mixed-Use project in Midtown San Jose is already spoken for. Based on the image below the project will have:

• Chase Bank
• Chipotle
• Five Guys
• Subway
• A Yogurt Shop
• A Day Spa

Not too shabby for a five story apartment building. In the past a project like this would have likely not received any retail at all.

Source: credit goes to an anonymous poster, speak up in the comments if you want the credit =)

Bike Sharing is Coming Soon to Downtown San Jose!

About 15 bike-sharing stations are coming to Downtown San Jose in August. The program will be available 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. The bikes themselves seem a lot better than other bike-sharing programs around the world with LED lights, a 7-speed grip shift, and drum brakes. In fact, they cost over $1,000 per bike.

The pricing for membership in the program is only $88/year. You can also get a 24 hour membership for $9 or pay $22 for a 3 day membership. Membership give you unlimited rentals up to 30 minutes, and you can pay more if you need extra time. Whenever you go to a station, it resets the 30 minutes timer, allowing you to use the same bike for a longer period of time without have to pay any extra fees.

You can click on the images below to learn more about the bike and see the exact locations of the Downtown stations (there will also be a Japantown station). For more information and to register for membership, head over to the Bay Area BikeShare website over here. They are accepting memberships starting today!

San Jose Bacon Festival!

The Garlic Festival in Gilroy is one of the largest food festivals in California and is a huge draw for from all around the Bay Area. What could possibly be better than Garlic? BACON. Lots and lots of bacon! I'm all over this. Hopefully this will one day grow to the same scale as the Garlic Festival. They are off to a good start with food trucks all offering bacon dishes, a bacon cooking competition, a bacon beauty pageant (???), a bacon parade, bacon games, and even a bacon square dance. 

Right now they are looking for vendors (more info below), but I'm sure more info will be revealed closer to the event on Saturday, August 31st.

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San Jose Bacon Festival

 

Saturday, August 31st
11:00 am to 10:00 pm

 

San Jose Flea Market
1411 Mabury Road
San Jose, California 95133

What's more All-American than the SJ Bacon Festival on Labor Day weekend?!

During the day, the festival runs alongside the bustling SJ Flea Market at Berryessa. And at night, the festival runs alongside the popular  The Night Market.

At the festival, there are lots of food trucks--all offering special bacon dishes for $5 or less! There is a Bacon Cooking Competition, a Bacon Beauty Pageant, a Bacon Parade, a Bacon Square Dance, bacon games and more!

  Learn about vending at the Bacon Festival > 

 Vendor Submissions are open until Tuesday, August 13th.

  

If you have a questions regarding this application process, contact Stephanie at sanjosemade.steph@gmail.com.

Saturday Stats: San Jose Ranks as the #10 Best City of Same-Sex Weddings

With the demise of the Defense of Marriage Act, California cities can now be included as the best places for gay weddings. Those cities will benefit from increased dollars being pumped into the economy for ceremonies and receptions, as well as happier residents that are no longer discriminated against.

San Jose ranked #10 on the list of best cities for same-sex weddings in the country. San Francisco ranked #1, and I will say that is well deserved (there, I paid a rare compliment to SF =).

The rankings are based on 12 different pieces of criteria including the HRC Equality Index, % of gay population, gay bars per capita, florists per capita, bridal shops per capita, hotels per capita, wedding planners per capita (SJ ranked #3), DJs per capita (SJ ranked #4), catering companies per capita, bakeries per capita, and photographers per capita (SJ ranked #3). See the full top 10 list below:

Top 10 List

1.) San Francisco, CA
2.) Seattle, WA
3.) Boston, MA
4.) Minneapolis, MN
5.) Riverside, CA
6.) Washington, D.C.
7.) San D9iego, CA
8.) Rochester, NY
9.) Los Angeles, CA
10.) San Jose, CA



Source: Movoto Blog

The 8th Annual Frida Kahlo Fundraiser

The 8th Annual Frida Kahlo Fundraiser

Frida & Diego look alike contests, silent art auction, music, performances, food & drinks.

Friday, July 12th, 6–9pm

Mexican Heritage Plaza
1700 Alum Rock Ave.
San Jose, CA

Barracuda Networks Expands to South San Jose

One area of San Jose that has been very slow to benefit from the economic recovery is Edenvale. This South San Jose tech cluster was booming in the .COM days, but has been plagued with high vacancy rates for years now. However, it looks like things are starting to turn around.

Campbell-based Barracuda Networks has decided to move their manufacturing, customer support, hardware, and design teams to a 50,000 SQFT building in Edenvale (5710 Fontanso Way). A total of 100 jobs will be moving to San Jose. All it takes is a few high-profile deals like this to spark interest from other companies.

Edenvale is not close to mass transit, but does have a lot going for it. For starters it is close to the bulk of San Jose's current residential neighborhoods. Second, for those that don't live in the immediate area, it is a super-convenient reverse commute. Lastly, companies get a ton of bang for their buck. The price per square foot for the large amounts of space available is among the lowest in Silicon Valley. Hopefully more companies will follow in Barracuda Networks' footsteps.

Source: SVBJ

Berryessa Walmart?

Well, I have some bad news today. It looks like SyWest Development wants to build a Walmart where the Century Berryessa 10 movie theaters used to be. SyWest has recently razed a beloved theater in Pleasant Hill to build several cookie-cutter big box stores, despite protest from thousands of residents. It looks like they want to do something similar in San Jose. While there is little reason to preserve the Berryessa theater, putting another generic Walmart there seems like a poor use of the space, which will only be minutes away from the new San Jose BART station in 2017.

The person to complain to is Bill Vierra, the SyWest president and COO (bill_vierra@sywest.com). More information on the flyer below.

Thanks Andrew for sending this in!

Dome Theater in Pleasant Hill that was Razed by SyWest