The Capital of Silicon Valley. The Heart of Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley South. A lot of names have been used, a lot of places have claimed adoption of it, but we still have the problem of what and where is Silicon Valley. Do we have that same problem with our city? People definitely know the way here now, but do they know when they have arrived? More importantly do they have a memorable feeling of “place” that will lead to a return trip?
I would say we are getting there.
But we can not look back and be satisfied with our progress as compared to “then.” Our next mayor must focus attention and resources to downtown and jump start it. We have the cornerstones to build upon: the California Theater, SJSU/Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, a slew of nice hotels, HP Pavilion, The Rep, the Tech, The Children’s Discovery Museum, countless restaurants, several new housing projects, and strong neighborhoods surrounding it. But we need much, much more.
Our downtown has to be the cultural, social, political, and entertainment hub of the city. The next mayor must wake up every morning thinking about downtown and how to improve it. It is what “brands” us.
The biggest future challenge (or threat!) could be its “dumbing down” as the result of faulty planning relating to Coyote Valley and North San Jose. The downtown is still a fragile “ecosystem” that could be thrown out of balance quite easily – it happened before in the 50’s & 60’s – be careful.
With a strong, vibrant, and beautiful downtown, visitors, as well as residents, would have the playground, and the economic engine, necessary to be a truly great city. Let’s reach for it.
Michael Schwerin makes some very fine points in his argument that in great cities the focus is on the attraction center and not on the city center itself.
It has always baffled me more cannot see what is obvious to make San Jose more vibrant:
(1) Move the airport to that “place of dead roads” known as the Gilroy Morgan Hill corridor. Do it now. When the city center is out of the commercial flight paths then decent high rises can go up to add luster to the improving skyline.
(2) Bite the bullet and provide free parking downtown – no gimmicks, such as merchant validations or free days. In the South Bay the genie is long out of the bottle – no one is going to go back to paying five dollars to park just to be in the city center when Santana Row and Valley Fair have always provided free parking. I will not use the lots that have those horrible automated pay machines under any circumstances.
(3) Get over the notion of light rail bringing crowds to downtown for anything other than a saloon crawl drunk. Even if downtown offered high end shopping such as Santana Row, who wants to stagger the bags of expensive purchases to the hard seats of the lurching street cars.
(4) Santana Row and Valley Fair are the central roar of San Jose – get used to it and plan for it by building the city out to them, cleaning up the mess of Burbank as one goes as well as reincorporating it into San Jose.
Los Angeles has a jaw-droppingly beautiful downtown consistent with its great commercial wealth. I would rather hike the full length of Wilshire Boulevard than any trail in Yosemite – canyons of steel indeed.
Why is it that people, especially our local politicians, must engineer a Downtown chock full of attractions? Is it because they’re in lockstep with the big developers who rake in endless piles of cash, tearing down our history and building monoliths where the general populace has no desire to go?
Listen up here, I suggested this to many folks. You want a Downtown that will attract thousands of people who will spend countless dollars… pull up the existing street signs that say “Downtown San Jose” and relocate them at the boundaries of Valley Fair and Santana Row. It’s that easy!!!
I truly doubt that the San Jose taxpayers give a hoot about where Downtown is, just give them a place to have some fun and spend some dough. Were San Jose to put an advisory measure on the next ballot (not one of those phony mail-in things where 3% of the voters reply), asking, “should San Jose continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in the Downtown area,” I believe the majority of folks would eagerly mark “NO.”
I for one would rather see trees trimmed, streets repaired and swept, and other infrastructure better maintained.
What generates urban vibrance in a large city is a mix of amenities such as art museums, theaters, sports facilities, government centers, etc., coupled as they must be with high density residential neighborhoods. The theaters, sports facilities and museums will attract visitors from surrounding regions, but a large number of residents are always needed in the urban core to support smaller downtown businesses. The mall and suburban track mentality started killing inner cities decades ago. Most will never come back. Some like San Jose might, but only if middle and upper middle class people have a reason to migrate back to the inner city. In the Bay Area, San Francisco invariably comes to mind when we think “city.” What makes San Francisco an interesting place to live, however, are its multitude of quaint neighborhood districts, such as Noe, Protrero Hill, the Inner Mission, Clement and Union Streets, the Outer Richmond, and the Marina. The point is that San Fran has a multitude of Willow Glenns. “The City” also now has its downtown ballpark, and we’ve all seen what that’s done to generate development on the Bay side of Market. San Francisco knows how to get it done. San Jose can learn much from our neighbor to the north.
Regarding point #2 in post #2: Yes!
Why would anyone in their right mind pay $1.00 for every 20 minutes parking to hold a business lunch downtown when there is free parking at Santana Row?
If you schedule a quick meeting over a cup of coffee downtown you will pay more for parking than you will for the coffee.
It makes more sense to do business elsewhere.
Kudos to the contributors for their cogent comments. Too bad our “leaders” can’t see things as clearly. They still believe that the new City Hall will be the economic engine to drive the “new” downtown (how many times have we heard this before?) City workers are frightened to walk from their cars in the daytime, many blocks from this “destination” so how are they going to convince the general public what a swell place downtown is?
Today’s comments sound like a groundswell of opposition to the current policies of the so-called “mayor of downtown”, Ms. Chavez. If you like what she’s done to downtown so far, just wait in the unlikely chance she becomes mayor.
Hey Michael, I kind of disagree with you. San Jose is not Chicago, Philly or Salt lake City because downtown San Jose is way more exciting than those places, in terms of downtown, since there are alot of attractions and nightclubs located in the downtown core, not outside downtown, like Chicago’s Rush St. district. I’ve been to those cities, and I was shocked that they had dead downtowns during weekends and night hours. Like Mike said, their sidewalks roll up after 6, and the city sleeps, not San Jose. I mean downtown. It’s just getting warmed up with movies, dinner and clubs. It also has a very good theater scene in downtown San Jose. On weekends, people like to go to the Tech, Martin Luther King Library, plaza park, riverpark, arena, new city hall and Museum of Art. John, they’re finishing CIM project which features a high-class bowling alley, City Heights, a 16 story condo development, and final length of the riverpark. Downtown is already the hub of business, intertainment, social, government and neighborhood communties. What do you mean we need much, much more since it has almost everything a downtown has, john? Oh, by the way, for your own interest, Philly scene is South Street which is not in downtown, and the downtown sleeps, not the city, but San Jose has SoFa in the downtown area, and isn’t that great?! San Jose may sleep in the rest of the area, but downtown is happening. We should be proud of it, and also, we should try to improve downtown to make it even better with more housing.
“City workers are frightened to walk from their cars in the daytime…”
Aw that’s great – so CH will be knocking off around 3:30 during the winter months?
BTW, I’ve found the perfect spokesperson to lead San Jose on current and future (lightrail, BART, MLB, airport exp, downtown at any cost) big ticket projects…
http://www.chicagoist.com/images/2004_11_11.koolaid.jpg
What is the focus on downtown? How many cities have you visited because of their “downtown.” I don’t say to my friends, Hey, Let’s to to downtown San Francisco. No. It’s let’s visit the Golden Gate Bridge or Golden Gate Park. Lets go see the Giants at the Ballpark. Let’s go to Fisherman’s Wharf or The Cannery. The same thing in Chicago where I lived for 25 years and worked “downtown” for 4 years. We never said Hey, Let’s go downtown. We went to Grant Park, or Wrigley Field or Rush Street or some other destination (Museum or Zoo) but certainly not downtown. People worked downtown. They played elsewhere, other than an occasional show (yes, the theatres were downtown). Who goes to downtown Los Angeles? Does Los Angeles have a downtown? I was in Salt Lake City two weeks ago. Downtown Salt Lake City is a dead zone. Except for a few malls, most storefronts are empty. Last year was I in downtown Philadelphia. It was hopping at lunch time but at night, downtown was quiet and the sidewalks were empty.
I have now lived in the South Bay for 20 years as of next week. The South Bay, including San Jose is not a destination. There are no major attractions and this city council or any city council cannot conjure one up over night. Downtown is not and will not be a destination. There are other better and nicer places to spend leisure hours just a short distance away. California has thousands of very nice places to spend our free time. That’s why people live here. Downtown San Jose is a nice place to work and our choices of where to eat lunch (and even an occasional dinner) have expanded significantly. But any thought that this “downtown” will be a focal point for people to spend significant amounts of time is misguided thought. Bringing a “Grand Prix” race here is not doing any good (other than significantly interfering with local businesses). It will not improve downtown. Basically it is three days and gone. No permanent improvement. No lasting attractiion.
The focus on downtown San Jose is misplaced. It serves its purpose as a place to work. It will never become a tourist destination.
Has anyone noticed that the 11th largest city in the nation, Detroit, is hosting the All-Star Game, the final 4, and the Superbowl?
While we all stuck out our chest as San Jose passed Detroit in population, Detroit was opening its doors to procure the largesse that comes with these prestigious events.
Detroit, once the darling of economic activity in the nation due to their automobile manufacturing capacity, has had to look for other ways of generating economic activity in their city.
With the dot.com boom, now a bust. With Corporations relocating their manufacturing base outside of Silicon Valley, we may need to heed the lessons of Detroit.
So before we start celebrating the decline of Detroit on our way up the ladder, maybe we ought to ask them what they learned on the way up and, more importantly, what they are learning on the way down.
guess what? San Jose is the new run-down Detroit of the new century. The city is in decline with a darelict downtown. Throw the bums(current politicians) out!
Michael makes some very good points in post #1, although I disagree with him on Chicago and LA.
San Jose will see downtown come to life more and more as the residential projects are completed and more people start living there and creating a demand for various types of retail, and miracle of miracles, maybe an alternative to trashed Albertsons, currently the only real grocery game in (down)town.
I’m kind of tired of beating this downtown horse to death. Rome wasn’t built in a day. It’s not going to be what we want it to be anytime soon, but it will continue to develop. What we have here is an identity crisis, if that’s possible since this town has no identity, and that’s what needs to be fixed. Put some money into creating an identity instead of sinking it into more misguided projects downtown.
True, Rome wasn’t built in a day, but sure was built a lot quicker than this downtown. Rome rose and fell in less time than this downtown has attempted one of its many “comebacks.”
One of the best towns in America doesn’t exist.
http://www.nbc10.com/news/4712294/detail.html
Could that be our problem?
There has only been one renewal of the downtown and that was when Mayor Tom was there in 80’s after that they dropped it. Hopefully the next Mayor will be of some help. Actually, maybe just not a hinderance will be good. The last couple have hurt it.