San Jose, Google prepare to negotiate
City ‘priorities’: Housing, jobs, preventing displacement
Marking a critical step in bringing Google’s massive transit village project to downtown San Jose, the city and tech giant next month will begin negotiating what kind of benefits the community will reap in exchange for the 80-acre development proposal.
Over the next six months, a team of negotiators from the city and Google will hash out a contract that spells out the extent to which Google will be allowed to develop the land and how much it will contribute to cover the project’s impacts.
The development agreement will determine the monetary added value of land-use changes required to move ahead with certain elements of the project — such as building higher than the area’s height limits and reducing the number of required parking spaces.
Google’s cutting-edge proposal — dubbed Downtown West — consists of office buildings, homes, hotel facilities, shops, restaurants, entertainment hubs and cultural centers across 80 acres near the San Jose Diridon station and the SAP Center, where the tech giant could employ up to 25,000 people.
The San Jose City Council on Tuesday unanimously agreed to extend a contract with the consulting company HR&A Advisers, which has been involved with the project for the past two years, to help with the negotiation preparation.
Kim Walesh, the city’s director of economic development, Nanci Klein, the city’s director of real estate and Johnny Phan, deputy city attorney, will be representing the city at the negotiating table.
As part of approving Google’s land purchase late last year, city officials named three priorities when it came to the community benefits for this project: building affordable housing, preventing displacement and creating workforce opportunities for nearby residents through job training and hiring initiatives.
Walesh told the council Tuesday that the city is committed to seeking benefits within those priority guidelines.
“We’ve had two years of community engagement already and a strong sense of priorities that were directed by council,” Walesh said. “And that’s definitely our intent to follow.”
Despite the closed-door negotiations, Walesh said the city plans to be “as open and transparent as possible.”
The city expects the negotiations, which will start in January, to last until the summer of 2020. Updates on the negotiations will be shared with the public at various meetings later this spring, including at the Diridon Station Area Advisory Group monthly meetings, open community meetings and a City Council study session tentatively planned for April 24.
Earlier this year, the San Jose-based organization Working Partnerships USA filed a suit, which was later dismissed, against the city alleging the sale of the land to Google was worked out with city officials in secret, without giving residents a fair chance to weigh in.
Jeffery Buchanan, director of public policy for Working Partnerships USA, said Tuesday
that it’s vital that the city keeps the public informed about how the community benefits are negotiated.
“There is a lot of public interest in the outcome of this development agreement, so we need to make sure that the public understands every step of the way,” Buchanan said.
Mary Helen Doherty, a downtown San Jose resident for more than 30 years, said Tuesday that she wants to see a final agreement that protects residents and families who want to stay here from being displaced.
“I’m excited about the opportunity to have a vibrant downtown but not at the expense of people wanting to be here,” Doherty said. “I’m not opposed to Google coming here but let’s make it so it really works for our city and our community and our kids coming up.”
The proposed Google development would create 6.5 million square feet of office space; up to 300 hotel rooms; 3,000 to 5,000 residential units; 300,000 to 500,000 square feet of commercial and active space, including retail and restaurants; up to 100,000 square feet of event space; and up to 800 rooms that would be set aside for visiting Google employees, according to the formal project plans submitted in October.
Final approval for the project is expected to take place in late 2020, after reaching the guiding development agreement.
Mountain View-based Google has spent roughly $393 million to purchase dozens of properties — commercial, industrial, office, retail, residential, parking and vacant lots — for its Downtown West project near the Diridon train station and the SAP Center.
But it’s not the only area of San Jose where the Mountain-View based tech company is looking to expand. Google also has recently bought or leased office or industrial properties in three other locations across north San Jose that could serve several thousand more employees.
The company has spent $409.3 million purchasing five big office buildings and three giant industrial buildings near the Alviso district in north San Jose. It has leased four north San Jose office buildings totaling 729,000 square feet from famed developer Peery Arrillaga at the corner of Brokaw Road and North First Street.
And on Dec. 3, the company paid $123 million for three Cisco office buildings — with plans to buy a fourth — on 25 acres in north San Jose on West Tasman Drive near North First Street.