VTA plans to develop Milpitas properties to raise revenue

The agency also hopes to increase transit ridership

“At this point we’re looking to the market to tell us what the market is interested in doing, based on the planning framework the city has established.” — Ron Golem, VTA’s deputy director of real estate and joint development

The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority is planning to develop two of its Milpitas properties in the coming years, likely into dense housing and a hotel.

By doing so, the agency hopes to raise additional revenue and increase transit ridership. Eventu- ally, it may develop more than two dozen of its properties around Santa Clara County.

One of its Milpitas parcels is 1.7 acres at the corner of Montague Expressway and Capitol Avenue, immediately adjacent to the Milpitas Transit Center, where the future BART station sits.

The other is about 3.4 acres at the corner of East Tasman and Alder drives, adjacent to the Interstate-880/Alder light rail station that VTA operates.

The smaller parcel is within Milpitas’ Transit Area Specific Plan area, where thousands of dense housing units and apartments have been approved and erected over the last several years to accommodate nearby BART and VTA lines. The BART station is expected to open between October and December 2019, Golem said.

Ron Golem, VTA’s deputy director of real estate and joint development, said the agency reviewed proposals from different developers this week.

“Some combination of residential and possibly some lodging component might be what works best there,” Golem said.

He said what’s possible is something along the lines of condominiums with hotel- type services, which could be purchased or rented by tech companies looking to house clients or employees in the area.

“It’s not necessarily a great site for offices,” he said, though he “wouldn’t rule out retail” in

the lower floors of a development there.

“It could also be a straight residential project,” Golem said. “At this point we’re looking to the market to tell us what the market is interested in doing, based on the planning framework the city has established.”

The site near the Alder VTA station is currently being used as a lot for parkand-ride transit users, but Golem said the agency is looking to develop a hotel there, or another commercial space such as a restaurant or offices.

It is adjacent to a property where a hotel developer has already received city approval to build a 194-room Element brand hotel and plans to build a 155-room Aloft brand hotel.

Golem said he thinks a third hotel could work there too since the VTA site lies within Silicon Valley’s socalled “Golden Triangle.”

The triangle encompasses parts of Milpitas, Santa Clara, San Jose and Sunnyvale where technology firms have a concentration of outposts. It has seen substantial development in recent years.

“Based on the market research we’ve done… we think there’s sufficient market demand to support three hotels on that block,” he said.

“We’ve had a lot of underutilized parking at that lot,” Golem said, referring to the park-and-ride area where hundreds of spots are available but only dozens are used daily. He said that station has seen “moderate” ridership numbers.

“The lack of available parking has not been the constraint on ridership at the station, so we see the opportunity to convert parking to commercial hotel development, which we know will generate more ridership,” he said.

People who currently park there could do so instead at the transit center parking structure or flat lot, which together have roughly 1,600 spaces available and is just a couple of light-rail stops away, Golem said.

The site near BART could see shovels hit the ground as early as late 2021, and the Alder site could follow roughly a year later.

Both projects could boost revenue for the agency, which has a nearly $500 million operating budget, and increase ridership.

“We have a portfolio of 25 sites that we eventually see having various types of transit oriented development on,” Golem said.