Big San Jose project with 1,000-plus homes will have affordable units
Scores of affordable homes would be part of a huge housing development in San Jose with more than 1,000 residences planned on an old casino site.
SAN JOSE — Scores of affordable homes would be part of a huge housing development in San Jose with more than 1,000 residences that would rise on the site of a shuttered casino, just-released plans filed with the city show.
Trammell Crow, one of the nation’s largest real estate development and investment firms, has proposed the development at 360 and 400 Saratoga Avenue near Kiely Boulevard in San Jose.
The 10.3-acre development site once accommodated the well-known Garden City Casino and the popular Harry’s Hofbrau restaurant, which both closed years ago.
Starting in 2016, at least four distinct proposals have emerged for a dramatic redevelopment of the prime site. The Trammell Crow mixed-use plan is the latest vision for the property.
“The project involves mixed-use commercial, transit-oriented residential and a publicly accessible open space,” Trammell Crow stated in its development proposal.
An estimated 1,027 residential units accommodated within three large buildings would be the primary feature of the development, according to documents on file with San Jose city planners.
The project also would include about 13,500 square feet of commercial space consisting primarily of restaurant and retail spaces on the ground floor, the city files show.
Roughly two acres of open spaces would be part of the development, the project files state. Of these, the largest is a park totaling 1.4 acres in the center of the development.
A proposed 15% of the 1,027 residences in the project would be affordable units, the planning documents state. That could equate to 154 affordable units.
The Trammell Crow project is the latest among several proposals for the site that developers have envisioned.
In 2016, offices, homes and retail were proposed by a development alliance of Prometheus Real Estate and Shorenstein. In 2020, an office campus and hotel were suggested by Dutchints Development. In 2021, Urban Catalyst proposed offices, housing, a hotel and a senior residential complex.
The two most recent proposals arrived amid the economic disruptions that the coronavirus unleashed. None of the first three proposals reached the construction stage.
The current assessed value of the property is $6.5 million. A local family, the family business and their affiliates have owned the property for a number of years, however.
At present, the two parcels that comprise the site are both owned by Pestana Properties and an affiliate controlled by the Pestana family. The Pestana family and company were also the owners of the site during the time of the prior development proposals that failed to reach fruition.
The current proposal being floated by Trammell Crow fits in with the Stevens Creek Urban Village Plan that guides overall development in this part of San Jose, the real estate firm asserted in the project plans.
“A focus of the development is a new centrally located park, a landscape surrounded by new mixed-use and residential buildings,” Trammell Crow stated in the proposal.
