The development firm turned in fleshed-out plans last week for a mixed-use project that would include a 230,000-square-foot office building and 476 apartment units, all wrapped in an industrial look — complete with faux smokestack — that executives say will attract corporate tech tenants and their workers.
“The office building almost looks like an old textile factory you’d see in Boston,” said Insight managing director Dennis Randall. “Those old factories used to have their own power plant, and the smokestack is reminiscent of that, to give it a true industrial vernacular. Then we’re basically building a SoHo-style neighborhood around it.”
The proposal would transform a site that has long sat fallow and largely cut off from the rest of downtown. It is located where Highway 87 crosses over Coleman Avenue, between a PG&E substation and the Union Pacific Railroad, and fronts the Guadalupe River Trail. To make the site developable, Insight will have to build a new bridge over the river to connect to Autumn Street, at a cost of at least $5 million, Randall said. “It’s an improvement for the entire area,” he said.
But a bigger challenge might be zoning rules. The land is currently zoned for commercial use only, and San Jose’s policy prohibits changing industrial sites to allow housing without a general plan amendment. Officials worried about the city’s low jobs-to-employed-resident ratio have for years resisted granting those, because of a fear that it could open the door to widespread conversions.
“It’s an interesting concept, but we have this hard line in the sand with the general plan,” said Michael Brilliot, a planning division manager for the city. “So everyone’s talking about it, saying, ‘What do we think.’”
Brilliot said the city isn't saying "no" to the concept at this point, just that more study is needed to figure out how it could work within the city's goals and policy framework. "One issue the city will have to grapple with is anytime you allow someone to convert a site, you have to ask, what are the unintended consequences," he said. "Why not there, there and there — and everyone will start lining up."
Randall says the concept for Railyard Place — with the housing — actually brings more jobs to the site than Insight would have to do under existing zoning, which would allow, for instance, a low-density industrial or R&D building. “We’re providing over 1,000 jobs on it,” he said. “I could build 135,000 square feet of industrial which would be 250 jobs.”
The residential, he said, is necessary to get the financing for the project as a whole — and is actually a big attraction point for tech office tenants.
While Randall said he supports job growth in San Jose, the hard prohibition on residential in certain contexts, especially so close to the core of downtown, “is small-town thinking. ... And the thinking has to change if we’re going to bring thousands and thousands of residents downtown,” he said.
Despite the uncertainty, Randall said he expects Insight could get approvals by October, “and we’re gearing up to break ground minutes after.” Lining up a capital source he said was no problem given the current economic environment.
Source: Silicon Valley Business Journal, Nathan Donato-Weinstein
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2016/03/09/plans-firm-up-for-industrial-chic-railyard-place.html
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