Offices, bigger Tech museum, restaurant row, eyed in downtown San Jose

SAN JOSE — A major expansion of The Tech Museum, a huge office building and a restaurant row are now part of a plan to revive the high-profile Museum Place complex in downtown San Jose, the project’s developer said.

All told, the reinvigorated downtown San Jose development, led by busy realty entrepreneur and venture capitalist Gary Dillabough, could add 1 million square feet of new office, museum, restaurant and drinking establishments at the old Parkside Hall site next to The Tech Museum of Innovation.

“We want Museum Place to be like what you see in Europe, or places like Seattle. The dining, restaurant, nightlife experience should be exceptional with this project.” Dillabough said. “We want people to be excited about this.”

The total project size would be in the range of one million square feet, including all three uses that are envisioned, according to Dillabough. The largest component would be a big office building where thousands of tech workers would be employed.

“To really help downtown San Jose turn a corner, we need more people to be downtown in the daytime, and fewer people commuting north to go to work,” Dillabough said.

With tech giants such as Facebook and Amazon eyeing downtown San Jose for big office complexes, according to realty industry experts, and Google and Adobe actively planning major new office projects, additional top-notch office spaces would seem to make sense.

The largest component in the re-imagined Museum Place would be a big office building. Also in the mix is an active and vibrant paseo and pedestrian walking area that would feature restaurants and drinking establishments to cater to museum, hotel and theater patrons, as well as employees of the new office building.

Before Dillabough’s involvement with Museum Place, it was anticipated that the office building would total roughly 214,000 square feet.

“The general concept that we are moving towards, that we hope gets approved, is more office space,” Dillabough said.

According to very preliminary documents on file with San Jose city officials, the office building could be 750,000 square feet or larger. Also in the works is 63,000 square feet of additional space for the Tech Museum, which currently totals 132,000 square feet.

Bob Staedler, principal executive with San Jose-based Silicon Valley Synergy, a land use and planning consultancy, noted that the original site proposal site anticipated that a hotel and residential tower would join the offices and museum expansion. Staedler said the current Dillabough vision appears to be promising.

“At the end of the day, the Tech Museum is expanding, and that is a win for the city,” Staedler said. “The really important part of this is Museum Place now has a developer in Gary Dillabough, who has a vision and has the ability to implement that vision.”

Share this: Print

View more on The Mercury News