What Google’s San Jose project means for downtown

For years, much of the area around Diridon Station has been a neglected jumble of grimy auto body shops, vacant lots overgrown with weeds and shabby warehouses.

Google — whose plans face a critical City Council vote Tuesday — is expected to transform some 50 acres into a mix of offices, shops and restaurants connected by pathways that wind through parks and plazas filled with public art. Steps away, Diridon is set to undergo its own renovation and become the only place in the Bay Area where BART, Caltrain, Amtrak and high-speed rail converge.

It’s a tall order. But if the tech giant succeeds, the project could transform a downtown that has struggled to rebound from sprawling development in the 1950s and 1960s, when city manager Dutch Hamann rapidly annexed land at the city’s fringes while neglecting its urban core. When it’s complete, the area could support more than 25,000 workers, a 65 percent increase in the number employed in the core of the city today.

For longtime restaurateur and downtown business owner Steve Borkenhagen, Google’s foray into San Jose might finally spark the kind of urban rejuvenation he’s dreamed of for decades. For Kathy Sutherland, a nearly 40-year resident of the Delmas Park neighborhood in the shadow of the proposed development, the project brings both the long-sought possibility of a vibrant neighborhood and the fear of displacement. And for the urban studies theorist Richard Florida, the project is less personal but no less important — a chance for a major American city to finally get redevelopment right, to provide an antidote to the debacle of the Amazon HQ2 rollout.

It will be years before any such dreams or fears are fully realized, but the sale of more than $100 million dollars of city land — expected to be finalized at the Tuesday council meeting — sets the stage for planning and development to begin in earnest after months of closed-door talks and speculation about the biggest thing to happen in San Jose in generations.

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When Borkenhagen opened his restaurant Eulipia in the 1970s on S. 1st Street, “there were about seven people downtown,” the 66-year-old said.

San Jose as a whole has long had far more residents than jobs — an imbalance that has snarled freeways, left the city the most cash-strapped in the South Bay and generated scant revenue for things such as repaving roads and bridges. But relatively few people have made their homes in the urban core.

As a San Jose State student interested in art and film, Borkenhagen had to slog up to Oakland or San Francisco for a culture fix. Borkenhagen hopes that Google will inject a dose of not only residents but young professionals with money to spend on restaurants and nightlife and culture so that more theaters and galleries can flourish.

“I’ve been sort of waiting for this my whole life,” he said. “We’ve simply never had anything like this.”

Even as it tried to pour life into downtown in the 1980s and ’90s, the city botched planning on many of its plazas and parks — in some cases creating largely unused wastelands rather than pedestrian-friendly gathering places, said Borkenhagen, who gave up his car several years ago for walking, FordGo Bikes and the occasional Uber. Now he is leading a campaign to erect a modern replacement to the light tower that graced the intersection of Market and Santa Clara streets at the turn of the 20th century near the site of the Google development.

“It’s going to be a bustling downtown,” Borkenhagen said. “If you’re an urban planner, you’ve got to be licking your chops.”

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The neighborhood several blocks southeast of Diridon Station was “rough” when she bought her home in 1980, Sutherland said.

The weekend her family moved in, a prostitute was shot down the street. A nearby bar sold stolen liquor to a homeless clientele. Noxious fumes from car repair shops wafted through open windows on warm nights. But the house was affordable and Sutherland, now 60, liked the architecture. Her kids could walk to the now-shuttered Lou’s Donut Shop without crossing the street, and the backyard was so large that her daughter later married there in front of 130 guests.

Sutherland wants to see Google move in nearby and hopes that, this time, promises won’t go unfulfilled.

“We know that our neighborhood needs to change,” she said. “We have been waiting for development and we have so many developments that have gone through the approval process, but nobody’s put a shovel in the ground.”

That’s what makes Google’s determination to create a master plan for the area so enticing to city leaders: the risk of stalling is much more limited than if a variety of smaller companies bought up the neighborhood and built piecemeal.

“We’ve lived through bad planning,” said Sutherland, a one-time council hopeful and an active member of her neighborhood association who sat on the Station Area Advisory Group that met monthly for most of 2018 to discuss the future of the neighborhood. “It’s time for our neighborhood to get to the next phase.”

But Sutherland wants local residents to have a say in how that next phase looks. A homeowner whose children also are fortunate enough to own homes in the area, she stands to build significantly more equity with Google — and thousands of well-paid employees — nearby. But she is concerned about how nearby renters will fare and the possibility some families will be forced out.

“I don’t think anybody is going to be able to ignore that,” she said. “It’s going to have to be addressed.”

Mayor Sam Liccardo and several of his council colleagues have pushed for 25 percent of the housing developed in the area to be affordable. But nothing is set yet, and Sutherland also has concerns about parking — only residents of the area are supposed to park on the streets — and the prospect of raised building height limits in the area obscuring views.

“If we weren’t involved,” she said, “we’d get run over.”

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Rarely do cities have as much relatively empty urban space as San Jose has smack in the middle of downtown.

Florida, the author of a widely discussed book on downtown renewal and urban creativity, thinks San Jose has a golden opportunity to show not only the region but the nation, how “tech companies and inclusive development can go together.”

New York and Virginia are set to give Amazon millions of dollars in subsidies, tax rebates and fee waivers in exchange for the company’s HQ2 — an approach that Florida said shows government catering to the interests of a company rather than advocating what’s best for the community. San Jose hasn’t promised such incentives and is actively pushing Google to help offset the rise in housing costs its arrival could bring.

“I think this could be a real test case,” Florida said, praising Liccardo’s political leadership and Google for showing “some good will” by coordinating with the city and listening to community input.

Companies such as Google that depend on brand name can enhance their brand by developing inclusive, inviting areas, Florida said.

But “you can’t figure this out all in advance,” he cautioned. “Maybe this is an ongoing experiment and there’s a give and a take.”

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San Jose mayor seeks Sacramento help for Google village Google can draw in more tech companies, Florida said, but planners could also deliberately create space for civic groups, too. For decades, he added, down-and-out cities allowed their anchor institutions — big hospitals and universities and companies — to do what they wanted without demanding much in return. Now that many cities are revitalizing, leaders have the ability to put some pressure on the Googles of the world.

“San Jose,” Florida said, “has the opportunity to be one of the first cities to get it right.”

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