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North San Jose Revitalization
North San Jose is home to more than 1,200 of the world’s best-known
technology companies, including eBay. But North San Jose is showing
its age, with an outdated land-use pattern that does not reflect the
innovation and creativity one might expect from Silicon Valley. Instead,
North San Jose is full of two- and three-story campus industrial buildings
surrounded by vast surface parking lots, connected by wide streets that
are built for speeding cars.
North San Jose is a pedestrian nightmare, but it is also ripe for a
change. North San Jose has a reliable light-rail system that offers a
great opportunity for new, better, development.
In 2005, San Jose’s City Council approved the North San Jose
Area Development Policy in an attempt to revive the city’s business
district. The policy targets the area west of Interstate 880, south of
Route 237, and east of the Guadalupe River. North San Jose will
embrace a mix of uses and more compact development, will include many
more homes so people have the option to live near where they work, and
will allow for pedestrians, bicyclists and transit riders to get around
more safely and easily.
The redevelopment of North San Jose was stalled for over a year with
lawsuits (see Campaign Update below), but after a December 2006 ruling
will now be able to move forward.
The redevelopment will:
- Allow for an additional 27 million square feet of new research and development and office space for businesses.
- Include up to 32,000 new high-density residential units in close proximity to employment centers.
- Bring up to 83,000 new jobs to San Jose, helping to balance the city's proportions of jobs and housing.
- Make improvements to the transportation system to encourage more use of the Valley’s light rail system.
North San Jose can become a place that residents enjoy, that is inviting, vibrant, safe and walkable. But to do that, certain amenities should be a part of the plan. These include:
- Parks, plazas and other open space attractions that are accessible to the people who live and work there.
- More bicycle lanes to offer people more options for getting around, so they don't have depend entirely on cars.
- Wider sidewalks to make walking a pleasant, safe experience.
- A new school site to accommodate students who live in the new homes in the area.
What's At Stake
As San Jose—the Bay Area's largest city—continues to grow, the redevelopment of North San Jose has the potential to be a model of smart growth that the city and the region could emulate.
North San Jose already has good infrastructure in place, and is an ideal place to direct new development, instead of paving natural areas and farmlands outside the city and having to create entirely new infrastructure as well.
Now it is important to ensure that North San Jose lives up to its promise.
What You Can Do
- Find out more about North San Jose’s redevelopment at the City's
website.
- Show your support for smart growth in North San Jose by writing a letter to the editor of the San Jose Mercury News at letters@mercurynews.com.
(The Mercury News asks that letters be 125 words or less if possible.)
- The North First Street Area is a Great Communities Collaborative
site. To find out more about this effort, go to their
website.
Campaign Update
September 2007
Several parallel efforts have, in recent months, started to pick up speed
in the planning of a complete community for the North First Street corridor
of San Jose. Consultants have been hired to craft design guidelines,
a neighborhood Task Force will be master planning the area and the city-wide
General Plan update will, at the very least, direct attention away from
Coyote Valley and onto the need for smart infill. Greenbelt Alliance
is working to ensure that the City is thinking strategically about the
incredible development potential of this area, and is also working to
garner community support for walkable development near transit.
August 2007
San Jose has recently kicked off a Master Plan effort for the North First
Street area and has convened a Task Force of residents and property
owners to tackle issues such as parks, schools, and the future use
of the Agnews Developmental Center. The Task Force is chaired by newly
elected District 4 Councilmember Kansen Chu and should have recommendations
for the full City Council in winter 2008. On a parallel course, the
City has hired planning and design consultants Solomon ETC, to craft
design guidelines for the redevelopment area that provide more detail
on street layouts, street setbacks, building orientation, and more.
These guidelines should provide the framework for creating a vibrant,
walkable community that meets the needs of both current and future
residents and workers.
June 2007
San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed has initiated a city-wide General Plan update
that would officially kick off in Fall 2007. On June 26, the City Council
approved the workplan for the update, and a Task Force will come together
over the summer. Already-approved policies
for North First Street have the potential to transform an under-utilized
area into a model for smart infill development. Greenbelt Alliance is advocating
that plans for both Evergreen and Coyote Valley be tabled during the
update and that the City instead focuses on North First Street.
January 2007
For over a year, progress on the redevelopment of North
San Jose was postponed due to lawsuits from the County of Santa Clara
and the Cities of Milpitas and Santa Clara over San Jose ’s EIR for the project. The Cities claimed that San Jose did not take into account traffic impacts that would be imposed on them. North San Jose’s
future became uncertain while settlement agreements among the four jurisdictions
were being finalized.
On December 6, 2006 Superior Court Judge Nichols approved the settlements. The City is now able to move forward with its plans. Under the settlement, it must contribute funding for infrastructure improvements in Milpitas and Santa Clara. The City will also need to conduct another school analysis for the Santa Clara Unified School District over the impacts of new students generated from the redevelopment.
San Jose’s Planning Department is currently reviewing applications and working on the zoning changes made necessary by the Development Policy. Urban Design Guidelines are still under progress with consultants and will not be ready until spring 2007.
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