Samsung's New San Jose Headquarters is Complete!

Last week Samsung officially unveiled their new 1.1 million SQFT North American Headquarters in San Jose. The ten story main building (technically two connected towers) is state-of-the-art. Each floor is no more than one staircase away from expansive outdoor gardens, the floor plates are huge, ceilings are high on every floor, and the campus has every amenity you can think of (yes, that is a putting green in the sky photographed below). 700 employees have already moved in, but the building will accommodate up to 2,000 workers.

Check out some of the best photos I have found of the new campus below.

Source: CNET

Curry Up Now and Mortar & Pestle Now Open in North San Jose!

Finally, San Jose has gotten a Curry Up Now brick & mortar restaurant! Curry Up Now has been one of my favorite food trucks for years and I was elated when they built their first restaurant near my work in San Mateo. They went on to open two additional restaurants in San Francisco and Palo Alto, but have saved the best for San Jose.

Ideally situated in the Golden Triangle, San Jose's Curry Up Now is the largest with 160 seats. Of course it offers all of their favorites such as their famous Tikka Masala Burritos, Sexy Fries, Deconstructed Samosas, and Naughty Naan--however, there will be some new items exclusive to San Jose. The San Jose location will be the only one to offer Brunch, and they created an assortment of specialties for the occasion like the Bird's Nest Samosa (photo below) and Indian-style crepes.

It gets better. The San Jose location also has a Mortar & Pestle, their Indian-themed craft cocktail bar. The only other one that exists is in San Mateo, and it's my favorite bar on the Peninsula. The drinks are designed to be paired with spicy Indian dishes and have unique flavors I have not had at any other bar before. The drinks are outstanding and are worth a trip in and of themselves.

Curry up Now is located at 3250 Zanker Road, near Patxi's and Wahoo's. The restaurant is open 11am-10pm Monday through Thursday, 11am-11pm on Friday, 9am to 11pm on Saturday, and 9am-9pm on Sunday.

Source: Eat - Drink - Play

New Tech Campus Coming to Downtown San Jose!!!

Downtown San Jose is growing by leaps and bounds when it comes to residential development and retail, but has not been getting a lot of love from commercial developers. That is going to change with a very exciting project on Santa Clara street near Diridon station and the SAP Center.

Trammel Crow is a developer that acquired an 8.5 acre plot of land from Adobe for $58.5 million. Adobe was planning to build an expansion of their headquarters in this area, but instead reconfigured their existing three towers to support a larger number of employees (no more private offices for every employee). I think it was actually for the better. While I'm a huge fan of Adobe and believe they play a vital role Downtown, if they were to build out their expansion it would likely not have been very inclusive to the whole community. Trammel Crow on the other hand is planning the exact opposite.

I'm going to start with the quote from the developer that Nathan ended his SVBJ article with:

"We’ve committed ourselves to making it iconic," he said. "We think it will be a landmark in the South Bay."

Iconic sounds right. Trammel Crow want to build 800,000 SQFT of office space across two buildings 10-12 stories tall. This would be a 10% expansion of all the office space currently in Downtown San Jose today and the first major office project to break ground since 2010. 400,000 SQFT of the project would be built speculatively without requiring a signed tenant. This would also be Class A++ premium office space with huge 40,000 SQFT floor plates and soaring ceilings popular with tech companies.

There would be 325 apartment units in a separate nine-story building. The whole site would be sprinkled with shops and restaurants and even feature a large public plaza along West Santa Clara Street. The beautiful and historic San Jose Water Company building would be renovated and repurposed. 2,400 parking spaces would be built to support the whole project, mostly underground... but hopefully most people won't be driving here.

A big attraction to this spot for the developer is the access to transit at Diridon Station. They are even tentatively calling the project #Diridon. With Caltrain, Light Rail, Capital Corridor, ACE, and a VTA bus hub, this is already one of the most important transit hubs in California. In the future Diridon will also be getting multiple Bus Rapid Transit lines, BART, and California High-Speed Rail. Even the $2 billion Transbay Terminal will not be as well connected as Diridon.

Trammel is expecting to get their building permits in Q1 2016, start construction in the summer, and have the first office building ready for occupancy by the end of 2017. The apartments are slated for 2018. They are also promising a signature look that will make the project a South Bay landmark. I cant's wait to see the first drawings for this!

Source: SVBJ, Hat tip to Josh Russell for sending this in!

San Jose's Velostrata Raises $14M

Velostrata is a tech company that enables network admins to easily move virtual machines on their network into the cloud. Their software runs on top of VMware, and makes moving servers into the cloud as easy as right-clicking.

The San Jose company--which is headquartered at 2880 Zanker Road--has operated in stealth mode for over a year and is just now announcing a $14 million funding round. This goes to show that San Jose has tech startups as well, not just established companies.

Velostrata has a total of 25 employees, with plans to grow to 40 within a year. They also have an office in Tel Aviv.

Source: VentureBeat

Camera 12 Cinemas Getting 3-Screen Barco Escape Technology

Barco Escape is an immersive movie experience that uses three separate screens to wrap a film around the audience. It was used to highlight a few a few shorts during the last Cinequest Film Festival, but is now making its way into the mainstream.

Last week, Camera 12 was one of only 20 theaters in the country to use the technology for a full-length film: Maze Runner 2: The Scorch Trials. During the movie there are almost 23 minutes of footage that make full use of all three screens. The rest of the time, the screens are used for effects that help keep the audience immersed (such as dust storms). Camera 12 is the only theater in Silicon Valley with Barco Escape. You can get your tickets to see the film over here!

The technology will also be featured on two independent films during the 2016 Cinequest Film Festival.

Source: SVBJ

Google Eyeing North San Jose!

First Apple, and now Google. Momentum is quickly building in North San Jose for anchor tech companies! With little room to grow in Mountain View, Google has finally decided to consider office space in San Jose.

The company is planning to start with about 150,000 SQFT. If things go well, I would not be surprised if they expanded. North San Jose has millions and maybe even tens of millions of SQFT worth of potential office development. The SiliconBeat article also references the BART extension in Milpitas and Berryessa as one of the reasons why the North San Jose office market will get hotter over time. Completely agree. BART is going to be a huge amenity for East Bay commuters that Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Cupertino will not have easy access to.

Source: SiliconBeat

NextEV (Chinese Tesla Competitor) Building R&D in San Jose

There is a little known fact that before purchasing the NUMMI plant, Tesla was trying to build their factory in North San Jose. Since they would not qualify for federal incentives at that location, the deal fell through. However, Tesla still does have some history with San Jose as they chose to open the first Tesla Store in San Jose--which is still considered to be the United States flagship store. I should also note that they are rumored to be seeking office space in San Jose.

Well, it turns out Tesla won't be the only electric vehicle (EV) company in town for very long. A Chinese company called NextEV has selected North San Jose as their location for a significant R&D center. The company already has a supercar that competes in the Formula E racing series. Now their goal is to manufacture a mass-market electric car in 2017 for the Chinese market as well as a US-bound electric car in 2019. The company seems pretty serious unlike previous EV companies like Coda. They have hired a former CEO of Maserati and poached employees from both Tesla and BMW.

NextEV has leased a 85,000 SQFT building at 3200 North First Street. The R&D center will focus on "connected car" functionality. Manufacturing will be done in China while car design will be handled in Germany.

Now all we need is an Apple facility for their future self-driving cars as well as a relocation of the Tesla Headquarters to San Jose--then we'll have hands-down the EV capital of the world.

Source: SVBJ

Wednesday Wishlist: More Public Art

A few weeks ago I was in Vancouver and was surprised at the amount of public art around the city. Below is one example that I really loved. This piece turns a bland, windowless side of a building into an attraction that tells a story about the the building itself. There are so many walls throughout San Jose that could use something like this.

I love all the murals going up in San Jose right now, especially Japantown. Let's take it to the next level and aim for something at the scale shown below!

P.S. Notice the green rooftop. Despite having much worse weather than San Jose, almost every high-rise had trees, shrubs, and patios on the roof.