Downtown San Jose office tower in the works
The project is planned at a key corner close to Adobe’s campus headquarters and the future Google transit-oriented village
SAN JOSE » A gleaming new office tower is being proposed in downtown San Jose on what’s touted as one of the city’s best corners, a potential landmark poised to be a catalyst to help revive a key street in the community’s urban heart.
The development is planned for the southeast corner of Park Avenue and South Almaden Boulevard. It would rise 20 stories and total 750,000 square feet, according to project builder J.P. DiNapoli Cos., a veteran developer that’s long been active in downtown San Jose and other Bay Area cities. That amount of office space could poten- tially accommodate 3,000 to 3,700 workers.
“This is going to be the best project in San Jose,” said John DiNapoli, president of developer J.P. DiNapoli. “It will be built at the best site in downtown San Jose.”
Other experts agree about the importance of the location at Park and Almaden.
“The scale of that intersection is Parisian, it’s an extraordinary site,” said Mark Ritchie, president of San Jose-based realty firm Ritchie Commercial, in a May interview.
The 270-foot tower could be marketed to a major technology company. Downtown San Jose increasingly is being seen as an ideal location for the tech industry.
“We are focusing on a single-tenant type of a use,” said Peter Larko, an executive with the DiNapoli firm. “We also have some scenarios that would enable this to be multi-tenant. That is possible because of a light well in the middle of the tower.”
A light well is an open area or vertical shaft in the center of a building that brings natural light to lower floors.
An affiliate of the DiNapoli realty firm bought the 200 Park Ave. parcel for $11.5 million onMay 31. To help accomplish the office tower project, DiNapoli has struck a deal to fold into the development a parking garage site that’s next to the property the DiNapoli group bought.
The agreement with the owners of the Hyatt Place San Jose Downtown hotel down the street allows DiNapoli to create a large enough parcel for the office tower by combining the Park Avenue and garage properties.
The office tower would be next to the proposed Museum Place mixed-use site of offices, residences, a hotel and an expansion of The Tech Museum of Innovation. It’s also near the existing Adobe Systems headquarters, a few blocks from the posh Fairmont San Jose hotel, and a short distance from a proposed transit- oriented community of offices, residences, retail and open spaces proposed by Google near the Diridon train station.
“We always thought that this would be a great location for a large office building,” DiNapoli said. “It’s been talked about as a fantastic site for a number of years. The timing was right and Terry Rose was ready to sell” the 200 Park Ave. site.
CBRE broker Mark Schmidt will market the office building.
The tower’s location also positions it to be part of a gateway into the Fairmont hotel and McEnery Convention Center sections of the downtown.
“The new office building will be iconic,” DiNapoli said. “We definitely feel it will be a benefit for downtown San Jose.”
Plus, if the office tower and the Museum Place project are both built, all of this activity could bolster a revived theater and museum district in the area.
“This area will be one of the most memorable and exciting parts of downtown San Jose,” Larko said.
The various developments along Park Avenue, including the new office tower, could also help provide this part of downtown San Jose with more of a cosmopolitan f lair, said Bob Staedler, principal executive with San Jose- based Silicon Valley Synergy.
“You can imagine going down Park Avenue from the Google development, past Adobe, and you see this iconic tower on that street as you walk towards the Fairmont, maybe Christmas in the Park,” Staedler said. “This building has the type of design that you see in European cities. People will know San Jose is an international city.”
The DiNapoli office project could break ground during the summer of 2019, Larko said.
“We were seeing a lot of interest from companies that wanted to be downtown when we were working to get approval for the fourth Adobe tower,” DiNapoli said. “People like what Google is planning. We are seeing a lot more activity, more active parts of the downtown.”