Opponents: New hotel will ruin De Anza

At 19 stories, 272 rooms, planned edifice would dwarf iconic neighbor

Despite outcry from passionate residents and preservationists, a 19-story hotel in downtown San

Jose soon will overtower its historic neighbor, the Hotel De Anza.

The San Jose City Council this week unanimously approved plans submitted by developer KT Urban to build a new hotel with 272 guest rooms, a 1,200-square-foot lobby and a rooftop bar and restaurant on a .2-acre site at North Almaden Boulevard and West Santa Clara Street.

The hotel — dubbed merely as the Almaden Corner Hotel Project for now — will not include any on-site parking, but the operator will lease 41 parking spaces from the city in its Market/San Pedro Square parking garage.

The new hotel will be a few blocks away from San Pedro Square Market, a short walk from the city’s SAP Center and Diridon

Station and mere feet from the De Anza. With development on the rise and more companies choosing to expand to downtown San Jose, city leaders say the new hotel will fill a growing need in one of the city’s most important areas.

But some residents fear that the hotel’s height and design will put one of the city’s most historic landmarks, the nearly 90-year-old

De Anza, in jeopardy.

The 10-story, art deco-style hotel is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Throughout the years, it has hosted dozens of political figures and celebrity icons — from Eleanor Roosevelt to Cab Calloway to Miley Cyrus.

But after nearly a century on the corner on Santa Clara Street

and Notre Dame Avenue, the adjacent development is anticipated to cause the landmark “serious construction and operational issues that will lead to its demise,” according to Embert Madison, an attorney representing Hotel De Anza.

Madison told the city council this week that the hotel estimates it will lose $3 million in annual revenue from competition once the neighboring hotel is complete — and nearly twice as much during its construction phase because of the nuisance to potential visitors.

Nearly two dozen residents spoke out against the project plans at a City Council meeting Tuesday night, citing incompatibility with the De Anza, a lack of parking on the site and an anticipated increase in congestion.

Barbara Goldstein, the city’s former public art director, called the soon-to-built hotel “beneath the dignity of our evolving downtown.”

“For too long, the city of San Jose has given away its history in exchange for buildings like this that lack in detail, are pedestrian-unfriendly and feature expensive, blank facades,” Goldstein told the council. “This is no way to build a sustainable downtown.”

Although city leaders commended the audience for their passion to preserve the city’s history, they refuted the idea that the proposed hotel would harm the De Anza.

“I don’t believe that great cities simply keep a large zone of nondevelopment and noninterference around historic resources,” Mayor Sam Liccardo said during the meeting. “Great cities find ways to integrate historic resources and ensure that they can be respected despite what may be larger buildings, more modern buildings all around them.”

Mark Tersini, principal at KT Urban, said he believed that the hotel would help stimulate business at the De Anza and that its lack of parking was standard for downtown hotels throughout the country.

Some of San Jose’s most prominent hotels, including the De Anza, do not have parking on their properties, either.

“We believe that the synergy will allow the occupancy of both hotels to be very strong and play off of each other,” Tersini said. “It’s in a nice setting with close proximity to the SAP Center and walkable to Diridon Station, so not having parking is something we’re very comfortable with here.”

As for the anticipated increased traffic, Council member Raul Peralez, who represents the city’s downtown area, said it should be seen by residents throughout the city as good news.

“In a downtown core, you want congestion. That’s the only way we’re going to get people out of their cars,” Peralez said. “If it’s the downtown that the mayor remembers — with large open spaces and streets — that means that it’s dead. That means no one is living here. No one is working here. And no one is coming here for shopping or for dinner.”