This barren city-owned San Jose hillside could soon become a vineyard

A barren, city-owned hillside in San Jose’s Communications Hill area could be transformed into a vineyard, but the idea hasn’t taken root with some neighbors.

A proposal submitted to the city earlier this year by some of the neighborhood’s residents calls for spending up to $400,000 to study the feasibility of planting and maintaining a vineyard on about 25 acres of the hillside and then finding a company to steward it. The money would be tapped from a special tax levied against the neighborhood’s properties for improvements.

Because vineyards are a new concept for the city, the business model for it has yet to be determined. In March 2020, residents in the Communications Hill special tax district will vote on whether to fund a feasibility study for the vineyard.

Manuel Martinez, who has lived on the hill for 10 years, said he’s not necessarily opposed to the vineyard idea but doesn’t support using tax money to study and create it.

“A private company gets to use city land to plant their grapes. What kind of a deal is that?” Martinez said. “It’s not a deal that’s resident-friendly or fiscally sound. It’s a giveaway.”

Those behind the idea say the study would help the city develop a reasonable business plan to address residents’ concerns. That plan, for example, could include requiring the vintner to reimburse the city for the study and initial work, developing a farm lease agreement with the vintner or operating a crop share program in which residents would get some of the profits from the grapes or wine produced.

“Our whole goal is that some of the profits end up going back to the community,” said Nick Patel, president of the hill’s largest homeowners association, Tuscany Hills.

The approximately 25 acres envisioned for the winery were dedicated to the city about two decades ago as part of an agreement with developer KB Home. At that time, the city approved KB Home’s proposal for about 600 houses at the southern edge of the hill’s base as part of the deal for the 25 acres, according to Jerry Strangis, a realtor involved with the project.

In 2014, KB Home submitted plans to expand its Communications Hill footprint by building a mixed-use development with up to 2,200 residential units, 67,500 square feet of commercial and retail space, 55 acres of industrial park facilities and public parks and trails on approximately 332 gross acres on Communications Hill.

Around that time, residents in the Tuscany Hills Homeowners Association at the bottom of the hill — near the “grand staircase” that swarms of people use for exercise — began raising concerns about crime, overcrowding and noise.

That’s when leaders of the association say the idea for a vineyard was conceived.

Proponents of the vineyard say it would provide beautification, security and fire protection for the hill — the last being a particular concern after a 35-acre brush fire on the Fourth of July threatened multiple homes and destroyed a detached garage.

“But the most basic benefit for residents is that their property values will go up,” Strangis said. “The value of the homes they own will go up because they’re no longer surrounded by an un-landscaped area of barren weeds and dirt and instead by a beautiful vineyard.”

Nearly three decades ago, the city developed The Communications Hill Specific Plan to establish a vision for the hill — one of the largest tracts of undeveloped land near the city’s downtown core.

The plan included building parks, terraces, recreational paths and public staircases within the urban hillside neighborhood, and led the city in 2004 to establish a special maintenance district as a way to fund those public features through a tax on property owners within district boundaries.

Maintenance work currently covered by the tax funds includes repairing access roads, landscaping and managing open spaces. To throw a vineyard into the mix, at least two-thirds of participating registered voters within the district must approve it in an election.

Leaders of the Tuscany Hills Homeowner Association submitted a petition to the city in January to hold an election with two separate ballot measures — one to authorize the expansion of security services on the hill and another to authorize the city to study the feasibility of a vineyard. They did not gather the required 25 percent of registered voters, but city staff recommended that the council still allow the election to take place.

“Since all of this has to be authorized by a required election of voters anyway, staff felt that they had indeed shown a significant effort was put forward,” said Thomas Borden, special district program manager.

If voters in the special maintenance district support the vineyard study in March, another vote would have to take place later to move forward with the creation and maintenance of the vineyard.

Share this: Print

View more on The Mercury News