SAN JOSE — Google would like to launch a proposed transit village in downtown San Jose as soon as possible, yet the search giant and city leaders are well aware that an intricate path must be navigated before that can happen, officials said.

The enthusiasm for the Google transit village, tempered by the sober realities of what cities typically require for a major development, emerged during a meeting at Backyard San Jose organized by SPUR, a nonprofit civic planning organization. The theme of the SPUR meeting Thursday evening: the changing landscape of San Jose.

“We would like to be in the ground as soon as possible,” Ricardo Benavidez, manager of community development with Google, said during the meeting. “But there is a process.”

In August, Google sketched out the first details of its vision for a transit-oriented community on the western edges of downtown San Jose near the Diridon train station.

The Google transit community proposal features 5,000 homes, 6.5 million square feet of offices, hotel rooms, shops, restaurants, open spaces, cultural and entertainment amenities, and a job training center.

“It’s incredibly exciting to see what’s being planned” by Google in the Diridon Station area, said Kim Walesh, San Jose’s director of economic development. “This is one of the most important real estate opportunities happening in the world. This can show the world what San Jose can do.”

Potentially 20,000 to 25,000 Google employees would work in the office buildings that would be part of the transit village, the tech titan has estimated.

“Google is making a decision to do what other tech companies don’t do,” Walesh said. “Rather than wall themselves off in a suburban office park, they want to be part of an urban community.”

Mountain View-based Google anticipates that it would submit a formal application to city planners sometime in October. After that, a city review and approval process would get underway, an effort likely to consume the bulk of 2020. Potentially by the end of next year, a final vote would be taken by the San Jose City Council regarding whether to approve or reject the plans.

“Sometime in late 2021, we can start pulling permits,” Benavidez said. Benavidez added that the work that would first get underway would involve “demolition and construction.”

The project would be constructed in phases. Google has yet to determine the precise pacing for the project once it starts.

However, it’s likely that a huge chunk of the office buildings and the homes would be built in the early stages of the development, according to information presented Thursday evening.

“Google is thinking big, and they should,” Scott Knies, executive director of the San Jose Downtown Association, said in an interview after the meeting.

Much of what has spurred the fast changes in the landscape of downtown San Jose is the potential for the Diridon train station to become a unique transit hub. Diridon Station already is a connection point for light rail, buses, Caltrain, Amtrak, the ACE Train, and Capitol Corridor rail lines. In the next few years, BART will connect to the train station.

“Diridon Station will be an intermodal station like none other in the United States,” Walesh said.

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San Jose mayor seeks Sacramento help for Google village The involvement by Google, as well as other major tech companies such as Adobe, in downtown San Jose, could spur an array of community benefits. Among these potential benefits: wider access to the Internet for all residents of the Bay Area’s largest city, said Shireen Santosham, chief innovation officer with the office of San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo.

“As we get these big tech companies coming in here, we have to figure out how do we spread the benefits around the community,” Santosham said.

Google intends to develop the transit-oriented community in a 60-acre section of the western edges of downtown San Jose that at present is deemed to be underutilized. A collection of parking lots, vacant parcels, old industrial sites, commercial shops, a restaurant, and a cocktail lounge now dominate the area.

“We are thinking beyond what we typically do for an office park,” Benavides said. “We have an incredible canvas that we can work on.”