City leaders finally dig in to restore Pellier Park
Groundbreakings don’t always draw a crowd, but more than a few people turned up Tuesday morning to watch the ceremonial shovels hit the dirt to start construction of Pellier Park in downtown San Jose. Some, like me, were probably there just to be sure it really happened.
Pellier Park is one of those projects — and there are a few in San Jose — that have been delayed so often or gone back to the drawing board so many times that they never seemed like they would really happen. But in this case, everyone involved seems optimistic the wait will have been worth it when the park has its ribbon cutting in mid-2022.
“We’re very excited to finally have this park be the right park,” said Chris Gunnuscio, homeowners association president for the City Heights residential building
adjacent to the park. “We didn’t want a park right now, we wanted the right park.”
Pellier Park was first conceived in 1974 by Leonard McKay and Jim Arbuckle and was dedicated on Nov. 29, 1977, San Jose’s 200th birthday. It honored Louis Pellier, a French immigrant who came to California for the Gold Rush but found his future in farming. He introduced the French d’Argen prune to the state and helped make it a leading agricultural export for what became known as the Valley of Heart’s Delight. In 1850, he created the Pellier City Gardens, a nursery he managed with his brothers, Pierre and Jean.
The original half-acre park, surrounded by short adobe brick walls and wrought iron gates, contained trees and benches, but it’s orchard-like appearance and difficult location made it a rarely-visited oddity. Then in 2005, the City Heights residential building was constructed next to it, and the park essentially disappeared — eventually replaced by a patch of green lawn and sign’s promising its return. Plans were
made, but the Great Recession slammed the brakes on any new park construction in 2010. Then, another longawaited project in the same area — the realignment of Julian Street headed toward Highway 87 — took precedence and plans were tweaked again to make the park more family-friendly.
The design — intended to look like a plum from
above — includes seating and a community table surrounded by a grove of flowering trees that makes up the “pit.” Mike Eckley, a member of the historical society E Clampus Vitus that donated $70,000 worth of labor to build the original park and was a key part of the restoration push, still has one of the adobe bricks, as well as bronze plaques that honored donors. The plaques
— or replicas — will be incorporated into a wall within the new park that tells the story of the Pellier family and the valley’s agricultural history, which should be educational for the hundreds of residents moving into the new or planned high-rise buildings surrounding the park.
“This has been a long time coming,” said San Jose City Council member Raul Peralez. “This has been a labor of love and certainly a challenge. But one of this things we made an important decision on was to hit pause on the project and make sure we were doing this right, that we were honoring Louis Pellier, that we were honoring the family, the history with how we were going to build out this community space.
“Because it’s more than just a traditional park for a community,” he said. “This is going to be able to tell a story, about not just a man but a man who represents what this valley was and what it continues to be.”
CHANGE IN THE AIR >> Derrick Seaver, the new CEO of the Silicon Valley Organization, dropped a serious hint that the SVO — which was embroiled in a scandal last year because of a racist political ad that resulted in the resignation of then-CEO Matt Mahood — could be in for another major change in the near future. Seaver told the Rotary Club of San Jose on Wednesday that the organization needed to be San Jose’s chamber of commerce, not just in practice “but in name.” And with its annual scene-to-beseen barbecue returning next month branded as the Chamber BBQ, it seems like the SVO’s branding — which changed in 2017 — may be headed back to its roots. Seaver reiterated that there are no plans to revive the SVO’s former political action committee, which was responsible for the ad, but if it did return it would take positions only ballot measures, not candidates.
SAN JOSE’S GROWING HISTORY >> The city of San Jose’s planning division has started a project to update the city’s Historic Context Statement — a fancy way of saying it’s the document that states why San Jose was built out the way it was — and it’s looking for public input. The last time this was done was 1992, so there are nearly 30 years of development and demographic patterns that need to be considered, and potentially historical people, places and events that have been a part of the past three decades — or which date further back but may have been overlooked at the time.
An online information meeting will be held on Zoom today at 6 p.m. You can register to attend the webinar or get more information on the Survey San Jose project at surveysanjose.org.