San Jose OKs Second Downtown

From the San Jose Mercury News:

The San Jose City Council laid the foundation Tuesday for massive growth of industry and housing in North San Jose, with a promise to nearby cities that their concerns over traffic and schools won't be ignored.

But by approving the environmental impact report and policy changes for turning an area of high-tech campuses into a second downtown, the council sent a strong message to businesses that San Jose won't stand in their way to expand.

This is a big, local story here in our Bay Area. North San Jose was first developed, through the San Jose Redevelopment Agency, as an industrial area of high-tech campuses with single-story buildings and large parking lots in the late 1970s, early 80s when the high tech boom was just starting. This area, also known as the Golden Triangle, provided the S.J. Redevelopment Agency with the growing funds the agency needed to completely redevelop San Jose's downtown. The 25-year project for downtown is nearing its completion, so the Redevelopment Agency needs another big project to justify its existence and expenses. Hence, we need to tear down the Golden Triangle, and put up a new second downtown.

The Golden Triangle was originally developed when land was plentiful and housing was still cheap. The Silicon Valley computer boom was just starting, and the Redevelopment Agency provided the new high-tech companies with incentives to build low-density industrial campuses there. What a difference 25 years makes. I live in one of the most expensive areas in the country. Today in the Bay Area, housing prices are exorbitant. Much of the housing that has been built over the last 25 years has been single or two-story tract housing, with transportation still being the auto. It is only recently that Bay Area cities have started to consider high density mixed-use development, coupled with light-rail public transportation. With land prices also becoming expensive, high-tech companies have been moving their operations out-of-state to areas where land is cheap and plentiful-Tucson, Arizona and Austin Texas are just two cities which have a thriving high-tech industry.

The problem is that these mixed-use developments have been small-scale. The Redevelopment Agency had just completed Santana Row--a mixed-use high density housing and shopping area near the west side of San Jose. But Santana Row is small--occupying a space of land where you can build two decent-sized shopping centers side-by-side. Santana Row is also located next to Valley Fair--one of the most popular, and busiest shopping centers here in the South Bay. The placing of Santana Row next to Valley Fair has resulted in a traffic congestion nightmare. For San Jose to efficiently grow, the city needs to develop a comprehensive and detailed plan for building a large-scale mixed-use neighborhood of housing and industry. There are two large tracts of land that can be used for this development. The first is Coyote Valley--a huge swath of farmland in the outskirts of South San Jose. But talks of developing Coyote Valley have been going on for 30 years, and have broken down after Cisco decided against building a high-tech campus there in 2002. The second area is the Golden Triangle / North San Jose.

But there are big problems with this development. The first problem obviously is the increase in traffic. Our transportation system here in the South Bay is the car. When we need to go someplace, we drive our cars. San Jose does have a public transportation system using both buses and light rail, however, the system is still inefficient and time consuming. San Jose also does not have BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit System). For this redevelopment of North San Jose to a second downtown, San Jose must work with the other Bay Area cities to develop a comprehensive public transportation system for the entire Bay Area. BART has to extend 20 miles down south from Fremont to San Jose, and possibly to connect into Coyote Valley for future development. The car cannot be a primary mode of transportation for this second downtown. And that's going to be almost impossible, since the Bay Area transportation network depends on the auto. The second problem is that there is also certainly the spillover of noise, air pollution, and the increasing needs by the growing population for such services as schools, police, and fire. Those spillovers from the second downtown are certainly going to affect the neighboring communities of Santa Clara and Milpitas. If San Jose pushes this redevelopment too fast, this is going to cause and outrage among the outlying communities, thus making it harder for all the communities to find common solutions for these problems. When the high-tech boom of the 1980s was in full swing, San Jose was on the receiving end of this spillover. High-tech campuses were being constructed in northern outlying communities of Sunnyvale, Mountain View and Cupertino, where these communities were getting higher tax property tax revenues from the high tech companies over that of the property tax revenues from residential properties. The employees of those high-tech firms in Sunnyvale, Mountain View and Cupertino were living in San Jose, and thus the population were consuming more police, fire, school and garbage services in San Jose rather than the northern outlying communities which had built those high-tech campuses, and had a lower population of residencies. A lower population in these northern communities, with their high-tech campuses, meant a lower demand for these social services. San Jose does not want to force this spillover of social services against its neighbors.

I'm not sure yet if this is the right way to go about with this development. The South Bay certainly needs to change and adapt to the needs of its citizens. This area still continues to grow at an alarming rate. Housing prices still continue to rise. San Jose is right in redeveloping its northern area into a mixed-use community as a way to improve the quality of life for the community. But there are certainly enormous problems and challenges to this redevelopment. San Jose needs to work with all the cities in the South Bay--and the greater San Francisco Bay Area--in order to solve these problems of traffic, pollution, and social services. The cities here are no longer separate entities. They are inter-connected and inter-dependent upon each other. Let's hope the local politicians understand that.