Tower would create affordable senior housing

SAN JOSE >> A slender residential tower is in the works for downtown San Jose that will create a unique blend of affordable housing for senior citizens, along with retail and office spaces, and preserve a historic building on the site.

The 25-story housing highrise is being proposed for 19 N. Second St. in downtown San Jose and would feature a rooftop rotunda that would be a focal point in a gathering area for the residents, plans filed on Nov. 18 with city officials show.

The project proposal also would retain the facade of the historic building and incorporate the new tower, according to documents submitted by the project developer Roygbiv Real Estate Development and project designer Anderson Architects.

“We plan to demolish everything except for the front facade and use a similar facade treatment in the new construction,” the developer stated in the planning documents.

“We are playing off the existing historic building, playing off the nearby Bank of Italy tower,” said Kurt Anderson, principal executive with Anderson Architects. “It’s a historic building, a historic district, and this is going to be eyecatching.”

The housing would consist of 210 units of affordable residences for seniors.

The lower levels of the development would create ground-floor retail in the historic building and three floors of offices.

Then, floors five through 25 would be residential, according to the development plans submitted Nov. 18 to city planners.

“You will have a mix of the new and the old, and that will make the project very interesting,” Anderson said.

In addition to the rotunda, the rooftop will be a gathering area for the residents.

“The whole roof deck is going to be accessible to all the tenants,” Anderson said. “There will be outdoor seating, a nice covered area. We eventually plan to light up the rooftop.”

Several blocks away, on the western edges of the downtown, a developer of The Carlysle tower has proposed a highrise with a restaurant or retail on the ground floor, offices on the next few floors, and residential on the upper floors — also a unique vision for San Jose.

That’s the sort of unusual approach that is needed in downtown San Jose, in Anderson’s view.

“As our city begins to mature, we need to look at more vertical integration,” Anderson said. “You need some retail on the first floor, some office on the other floors, and then residential above.”

As downtown increasingly becomes more packed with projects, finding ways to use smaller parcels becomes crucial.

“We don’t have a lot of land left,” Anderson said. “We have to go vertical.”

A project that incorporates housing, offices, and retail in a single development is a unique approach to mixed-use development in San Jose.

“To have a thriving downtown, you need retail, offices, people living and coming into the downtown, you need all of those,” Anderson said.