Pulte Homes eyes big residential project
High demand is expected for homes in south San Jose
SAN JOSE >> Pulte Homes has bought a large chunk of empty land in south San Jose where the residential builder could develop roughly 400 dwellings, multiple public records show.
On Feb. 20, Pulte paid $102.8 million for vacant lots near the corner of Raleigh Road and Coronado Avenue, a short distance from State Route 85 and a new Costco warehouse store, according to Santa Clara County public records.
“We are very excited about the community,” said Dan Carroll, Pleasanton-based vice president of land acquisition and land development for Pulte Group’s Northern California division.
Pulte could develop up to 419 homes on the approximately 25-acre site, according to planning documents provided by Nathan Donato-Weinstein and Elisabeth Handler, both staffers with San Jose’s Economic Development Department.
Were the site to be fully developed, it would be a small but noticeable portion of the 25,000 residential units that San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo has
proposed be built in Northern California’s largest city between now and 2020.
San Jose’s mayor also has emerged as a major proponent of clustering high-density housing and office towers near masstransit hubs, such as the Didiron train station in downtown San Jose.
“We are all stuck in the same traffic, we are all stuck with the same housing crisis that makes Silicon Valley unaffordable,” Mayor Liccardo said during a recent event hosted by the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.
Several transit-oriented projects are in the works downtown. Google is eyeing a community of office towers and other amenities where 15,000 to 20,000 of the search giant’s employees could work. Trammell Crow intends to build a mixed-use project called Diridon that would consist of 1 million square feet of offices, along with retail and 325 housing units on an 8.3-acre site. TMG Partners and Valley Oak Partners are pushing ahead with a million-square-foot office campus. Adobe Systems intends to expand its three-building headquarters by adding a fourth downtown office tower.
The goal of developments near transit hubs, according to leaders such as Liccardo, is to address what arguably are the greatest threats to the economic prosperity of the Bay Area and Silicon Valley: skyrocketing home prices and brutal daily commutes.
At one time, the area of the Pulte project was part of what San Jose city officials had hoped would be a full-scale transit village, complete with offices, industrial, retail, restaurant and residential developments. Today, the most noticeable adjacent retail is the Costco store. However, five minutes away by car are new Safeway and Target outlets, along with several restaurants and stores, located in a recently completed shopping complex. In addition, some transit stops are nearby.
Next to the Pulte parcels is a site where 301 apartments are slated to be developed as the Great Oaks Apartments. Construction activity was under way recently on that property.
The Pulte development could consist of singlefamily detached homes, townhouses and residential flats, according to city planning documents.
The residential builder didn’t provide details for the product types it is eyeing. Pulte, however, does expect brisk sales for the units in the development.
“We anticipate high demand given its proximity to several businesses and transit in a prime South Bay location,” Carroll, the Pulte executive, said.