Urban transit village pushes forward near BART station
Part of the project on the south side of Berryessa Road could usher in dramatic changes
The developers of a transit village next to San Jose’s first BART station say they are pushing forward with more intense densities and have unveiled new visions of how the ambitious Berryessa district development might appear.
The development, called Market Park San Jose, has begun to rise on the site of the old Berryessa Flea Market near Berryessa and Sierra roads.
“This will be themost significant urban village development to date in San Jose,” said Erik Schoennauer, a land use and planning consultantwho isworking on the project for the site’s property owner, the Bumb family. “We are very excited.”
Roughly 1,000 residences are already completed or under construction on the north side of this new urban village. However, the part of the project on the south side of Berryessa Road, with its mix of offices, residences and retail, could usher in dramatic changes to this part of San Jose
On the south side of the development, 1.5 million square feet of offices — and possibly as much as 2.3 million square feet— along with as many as 2,635 residential units are being planned, according to Schoennauer and Borelli.
Ground floor retail will be added to the five office buildings and six residential complexes.
“We are right at the Berryessa BART station,” said Ralph Borelli, chairman of realty firm Borelli Investment Company, which is spearheading the development on behalf of the Bumb family.
The five office buildings will range in height from six stories to 10 stories and be of varying square footage totals.
Tech giants such asMountain View-based Google, San Jose-based Adobe Systems, Cupertino- based Apple, Menlo Park-based Facebook and Seattle-based Amazon have undertaken a widening set of expansions that include office leases and, in numerous instances, purchases of land and buildings.
Huge campuses occupied by these digital behemoths have begun to sprout throughout Silicon Valley, and they have begun to actively craft plans for more major office centers in the region. Multiple experts say
the expansion boom is unlike any they have witnessed in decades.
“This Market Park development is a way for a tech company to locate jobs right next to that BART station, and have a housing solution in place, plus the new retail,” Borelli said.
The developers intend to accommodate the full range of needs requested by a potential tenant in the office buildings. Borelli said current plans call for the buildings to be occupied by single users. In addition, the buildings could be leased or sold to potential corporate occupants.
A neighborhood shopping center will be part of the northern section of the project and will feature supermarket and drug store anchors, according to Borelli.
The Berryessa project also could pave the way for how transit villages are undertaken in the future, in Borelli’s view.
“We consider this to be the largest mixeduse transit oriented development in Silicon Valley,” he said. “It will be built at what will be San Jose’s only operating BART station for several years.”
Traffic snarls have steadily worsened and home prices have skyrocketed in the Bay Area, so these kinds of developments may increasingly become necessary in Silicon Valley and other parts of the nine- county region.
“This is how development is going to have to be in the Bay Area,” Borelli said. “You want a very dense project that’s in a transit corridor and is mixed-use.”