Tuesday December 7, 2004 - San Jose’s Identity Crisis

Tuesday December 7, 2004 - San Jose’s Identity Crisis

When we first arrived in San Jose in October of 1974, the downtown was a sleepy central valley farming town. There had been some high-rise construction but not enough to change the skyline of the city significantly. On West Santa Clara the De Anza Hotel was a derelict building with homeless finding shelter when they weren’t being chased away by police. There was no Fairmont Hotel, Convention Center, Marriott Hotel, Hilton Hotel, Tech Center, Shark Tank… and San Jose State University looked pretty much the way I remembered it when I was last in San Jose back in 1967. About the biggest attraction downtown then was the Center for the Performing Arts. The San Pedro Square area downtown had a few restaurants but they struggled to attract suburban patrons.

The problem that San Jose faced back then was its tax base was largely residential with a small percentage of the total coming from business taxes. San Jose had become content to be the bedroom community for the rest of “Silicon Valley.” However the steadily rising cost of real estate in the Peninsula towns of Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and Santa Clara eventually forced companies to look southward for new office space and the First Street High Tech Corridor took off. The area along North First Street from California Highway 101 and California Highway 237 was largely farmland. Over the decade of the 1980s and 1990s, that farmland got converted over to office complexes. The changes began to happen during the mayoral terms of Janet Grey Hayes, who became the first woman mayor of a large city. During her term, she initiated a downtown revitalization program that eventually pumped nearly $1.5 billion into downtown San Jose.

But the real development got started in 1983 when Mayor Tom McEnery took over and converted the country’s eleventh largest city into the “Capital of Silicon Valley.” (You realize of course that Silicon Valley is a state of mind not a real place, but never mind, no other city on the Peninsula claimed the title—though in truth the mantle belongs to Mountain View where the imaginary place actually began.) McEnery inherited a city whose limits were expanding. In the decades before his mayoralty San Jose’s territory grew almost ten-fold through annexation, expanding to 158 square miles by 1980. McEnery and the city in partnership with the San Jose Redevelopment Agency (SJRA) began an ambitious program to create industrial parks to attract high tech companies. The Rincon de Los Esteros Industrial Area was adopted in 1974. It forms a 4,669-acre “Innovation Triangle” in SJRA hype bounded by California Highways 101 on the south and 237 on the north and Interstate 880 on the East. On the southeastern end of San Jose, the other large industrial development zone is Edenvale.

Adopted in 1976, this 2,312-acre area represents 13 percent of the industrial land in San Jose. The center of the Edenvale industrial zone is about where old California Highway 101 intersects new California Highway 85. On the eastern edge, the zone flows north up 101 to Hellyer Avenue and east to Silver Creek Valley Road. West it spreads west and south along Santa Teresa Boulevard. Development of Edenvale was dealt a severe blow by the Dot Com implosion as giants like Cisco cancelled plans for large industrial campuses in the zone.

McEnery did well by downtown, bringing in four major hotels, among them the Fairmont and Hilton—the decrepit DeAnza was restored to its early 20th century grandeur. The 1.2 million square foot convention center that now bears his name was constructed as well as the San Jose Arena and the Silicon Valley High Technology Museum, worthy enough for Clinton to pay a visit when it first opened.

Despite all the development that has gone on downtown, the city still lives in the shadow of its north-bay rivals, San Francisco and Oakland. The oldest city in California, San Jose’s only distinction besides being the oldest was also being the first capital of California before it moved to Sacramento. With the wealth of this city, you would think it could afford a symphony, a ballet, a major league franchise—not taking anything away from the Sharks; they’ve done wonders giving the city a sense of importance. By the way, the city had a symphony and a ballet but neither were supported sufficiently either by ticket sales or corporate donations to survive. The city also lacks a culinary tradition. If you want a varied selection of first-rate restaurants, you have to drive to Palo Alto or San Francisco. To be fair, San Jose boasts a good selection of Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Chinese restaurants.

There are signs that the city is beginning to build a downtown that attract suburbanites: music in Plaza de Cesar Chavez Park during the summer and Christmas in the park during the winter. The tech Museum, the new San Jose Repertory Theatre, and Opera San Jose in their new home the Newly Restored California Theatre all promise to provide that cultural center that will keep south-bay residents at home rather than driving north to its sophisticated neighbor by the bay.