Google widens transit village downtown San Jose footprint

SAN JOSE — First with a house, and now with an old union hall, located a few doors from each other on the same quiet street, Google has widened its footprint for a proposed transit village in downtown San Jose near the Diridon train station.

Google has bought a property owned by the legendary International Longshore and Warehouse Union and one of the labor organization’s affiliates, a site located on Lorraine Avenue near the transit hub and SAP Center downtown.

The site, now occupied by an empty building that is at least four decades old, has been bought by a real estate entity headed by Google and a development partner.

The narrow property sits on a half-acre lot, is occupied by a 3,500-square-foot building, and fronts on both Lorraine and West San Carlos Street.

This site is among numerous properties that Google has collected for more than two years to gain ownership of land for the tech titan’s proposed transit village on the western edges of downtown San Jose.

Google paid $6 million in cash for the Lorraine Avenue building, according to Santa Clara County property documents that were filed on June 12.

For a time, the ILWU and one of the labor organization’s affiliates, Warehouse Union Local 6, used the building as a union hall. The property also has been used as a church, according to multiple web sites.

The building was in existence at least as far back as 1978, according to an October 1978 ILWU publication called “The Dispatcher” that referenced a meeting at the union hall at 580 Lorraine Ave.

Last December, Google planted a stake on Lorraine Avenue when it bought a tiny house at 538 Lorraine Ave.

One of the players on the block is the D’Arpino family, a group led by Nicholas D’Arpino. This Campbell-based family has been assembling parcels on the south side of Lorraine Avenue for decades.

The D’Arpino family owns 506, 510, 512 and 522 Lorraine Ave., 255 and 275 Josefa, and 503 through 575 West San Carlos St., which creates a continuous set of parcels for big development. The first major exception: the tiny house Google bought, which is almost directly in the middle of the D’Arpino holdings. The second major exception: The old union property that Google now owns.

The Lorraine Avenue deal was the second purchase this month by Google in one of the company’s areas of interest for the transit village development.

On June 6, Google paid the city of San Jose $41.2 million for the site of a San Jose Fire Department training center. That deal gives the municipality a considerable amount of cash and roughly three years to build a modern new training complex at a different site.

With the most recent acquisition, Google, either directly or acting through the development venture, has paid at least $366.7 million purchasing properties in this section of downtown San Jose.

The company began its property purchases in December 2016 when it acquired an old Pacific Bell phone company building on South Montgomery Street.

The tech titan is buying properties in neighborhoods near and along Montgomery Street and Autumn Street. A ramshackle collection of older commercial sites, a few office buildings, some homes, vacant parcels, surface parking lots, industrial properties, and dining and drinking establishments dominates the area. A foundry that operated for a century before it closed its doors this year was also bought by Google.

The company is expected to begin sharing concept details for the project through the balance of 2019.

Mountain View-based Google intends to develop a transit-oriented community of office buildings, homes, restaurants, shops, and parks where 25,000 could work, including 15,000 to 20,000 of the search giant’s workers in this part of downtown San Jose.

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