The Public Market at Vancouver’s Granville Island is thriving center of community and commerce.
Tom McEnery has plans to revamp the entire San Pedro Square historic district in downtown San Jose and build a permanent outdoor public market neighborhood, anchored by the Peralta Adobe and the Fallon House, and inspired by world-renowned locales like the Granville Island Public Market in Vancouver, British Columbia. Now, for decades San Jose has excelled at allocating public money for failed downtown projects, so some of the citizenry out there in the suburbs is hyperpessimistic about such an ambitious project, especially one that yet again asks for a taxpayer “loan.” But the San Jose Public Market is a great idea, if you flesh it out. I’ll leave the political, legal and financial brouhahas for more specialized commentators and instead offer my own conjecture.
It’s simple, really: San Jose is the oldest settlement in California and the Peralta Adobe is its oldest building. Except for schoolkids on field trips, few people ever go there; the place has never been properly marketed, and the whole neighborhood has been underachieving for what seems like forever.
Any other city in the same situation would have figured out long ago that there should be a huge outdoor public space and town square, filled with upscale and downscale retail, perpetual outdoor street activities, a food market for everyone of all shapes and sizes and a plethora of goings-on for both natives and visitors, whether you’re a country-club aristocrat, a local farmer or someone who’s lost or just here on business.
It would all be anchored on an open market area as the main destination and public space where everyone would want to go and hang out—a place that would at least offer some degree of identity in a city that sorely lacks one.
Such a bold idea would totally synergize with the new glassy high-rise condos, should they get filled. If you’re suspicious of McEnery’s motives, whatever. But for the moment, I’ll revel in the inspiration, since I just revisited the Granville Island Public Market last weekend.
Granville Island is a former run-down industrial wasteland in the middle of Vancouver that was transformed into a thriving mixed-use urban oasis filled with artists’ lofts, unique shops, crafts, studios, a brewery, an art college, a hotel and the Granville Island Public Market, which is chock-filled with local products. The old industrial factory architecture was retained, and no chain establishments are allowed anywhere in the neighborhood. Working artists have to compete to secure leases. Whether you’re looking for freshly caught fish, locally grown spices or a handmade coffee table, Granville Island has it.
In case San Jo wants more inspiration from Vancouver, here’s another gem: a book called Vancouver Stories: West Coast Fiction From Canada’s Best Writers, from Raincoast Books.
Everyone who stays at the Listel Hotel in Vancouver receives a free copy of this book and it features 14 short stories, each capturing a different crackpot slice of the city. For example, in a tale called The Winter Market, cyberpunk science fiction author William Gibson, a Vancouverite, places Granville Island decades in the future when it has collapsed into another cycle of ruin, its surrounding high-rise condominiums now dilapidated slums. The desolate market area is where “kids huddle over the flames of their trash fires like arthritic crows” and the city surrounding the market is “where the broken and the lost burrow into the gomi [garbage] that grows like humus at the bases of the towers of glass.”
If you want to get rip-roaring cynical, that could happen to San Jose’s public market area 20 years from now. Downtown thrived, then collapsed for 30 years and is now rebuilding. Will the cycle repeat itself? I don’t know, but I’m sure inspired to write a story about it.
Gary, you should move to Vancouver, Prague, or Kansas City because San Jose will never ever suit your savvy urban taste! San Jose will never be that alterative urban hip with unique vibe, and I promise you that. It is what it is. Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s a reality. San Jose will never change.
The idea of such a market in a vacuum sounds great. Hell, I’d go…once or twice.
However, the comparison falls short, Mr. Singh. Vancouver is a destination in its own right (Granville Market is but one of many attractions); Seattle is a destination in its own right; thus Pike Street Market succeeds. New Orleans is a destination in its own right, thus The Quarter. Hell, even Nashville is a destination in its own right.
Is San Jose a destination in its own right? Ah, nope. How does this new concept succeed?
RDA has put BILLIONS into downtown SJ starting in the McEnery reign, and, sorry folks, it’s still not a destination in its own right like any of the cities mentioned above.
Neighborhoods, streets , libraries, parks, and other perks for residents all languish awaiting sufficient funds, and yet there is still this hue and cry to revive a moribund downtown (so that tourists think we’re cool) that a few $billion has yet to achieve. Meanwhile, those of us who live here put up with ever-contracting government services.
Do I believe that Tom and his family have a good idea? You bet! Is this the time to put public $$ into it? No way. Not until basic services have been provided. It’s spending public money to put icing on a turd. Oh yeah, we already have our $500k turd, that replaced/displaced the Liberty Bell replica.
Get enough cops and firefighters, fix the roads, keep the libraries open and well-staffed, do a helluva lot more of the basics of city services before you give money to ANY private enterprise to build a public market.
Oh, and what is it going to showcase? Tom’s Fallon House?, which has needed a paint job for at least three years to replace the $300k original paint job. Who goes there?? Someone please provide the number of paid admittances in the last year. It is in a major state of disrepair, after we spent $5.25+MILLION of taxpayer dollars to “renovate” it. It was a nice sinecure job for Judy Stabile for a long time, along with the Peralta Adobe. Does she still draw a paycheck from it? When is The Fallon House ever open? I went through it once—highly unremarkable. I’d never go back a second time. Who would? And this is touted as one of the showcases of the New McEnery Market Square? Gimme a break!!
If Tom and his family and investors think it’s such a great idea and bound to be successful, let them put their money up, not taxpayer money. If it succeeds as did PacBell Park (or whatever they call it these days) that’s great, and the McEnerys get all the profit, as they should.
But me, I’d rather the city spent the $6million gift + $2.5 million loan on roads, and park maintenance, and libraries…especially in these hard times.
2 – Of course, RDA money can’t be used for most, if not all, of the items you mentioned. No disagreement about the needs, it’s just that RDA money can only be used for certain projects.
As for the Fallon House and Peralta Adobe, no one goes because hardly anybody knows about them. Part of this project will increase the visibility and accessibility of these historic sites.
I respectfully disagree with you F.U.B. #1. I believe our downtown WILL one day have that savvy urban vibe that Mr. Singh and others (like myself) want. With the San Pedro Market (http://www.sanjosepublicmarket.com), future BART, high-speed rail at “European” Diridon Station and possible (quite possible now) Major League Ballpark in our future, San Jose will trully become a destination worthy of today’s RDA investments. We just have to give it 5-10 years. Patience my friend, patience.
San Jose will never be a tourist destination. So, as others have said, let’s stop throwing good money bad with projects only intended to make us look hip.
San Jose’s focus should be global technology, which it already is…now let’s just show it off.
When people drive into downtown, they should see office buildings flooded with signs of the future yahoos, googles, intels, etc.
It should be a sad reckoning to our local politicians that so many of these companies are located in our neighboring cities. Let’s not make that mistake again.
The sole focus of our RDA and local gov’t in general should be to attract large, high profile companies, and the good jobs that come with them.
When the city is bustling with tens of thousands more people who are here for economic opportunity, the restaurants, nightlife, and open market ideas will thrive on their own. In reality, we probably don’t even need to tax the hell out of our citizens to give the RDA money to throw around.
Just make conducting business here easier than any other place in the Bay Area. Get rid of “labor-peace” laws, eliminate the tedious process to construct a building. Stop making all corporate developments “fit into the plan.”
If you want to build a high-rise office, and bring your company and jobs with you, by all means. And for doing so, how’s this, we won’t even tax you.
Draw commerce! Its the horse before the cart.
The defeatists here are the reason SJ doesn’t have this market already. They’re fine living in a Walmart world and would rather funds go to repaving their cul-de-sacs. How exciting!
Maybe, instead of Gary moving to Vancouver, the naysayers should move to Livermore.
10 MHz Days: What does SF matter? San Jose doesn’t have to play “rank.” That’s a fabricated obstacle. This market is to draw people from the valley, not tourists. It will be a local asset, just like the rest of downtown. If it fills up with souvenir shops, then you can complain. Until then, get over your inferiority complex.
No slight to SF, but that place should play no role in the development of San Jose. It’s 50 miles away. Baltimore and Washington are closer together. So are Liverpool and Manchester.
It seems like people want to make excuses for SJ not being greater now, but in doing so, they’re preventing it from ever doing so.
While I sincerely wish Tom McEnery much luck in this endeavor, I’m just curious about one thing, what happens if this project fails too? Will the City of San Jose dump even more money into downtown, or will they finally get that taxpayer money needs to be spent on, as Richard Z. so aptly puts it, “core services,” or in other areas of San Jose that could prosper from added funding?
You have to accept the fact that SJ is not the central city in its urban area. Comparisons to cities that are central in their urban areas, such as Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, etc. are pointless, because SJ is never going to outrank SF.
If you want to look at somewhere else, I would suggest Tacoma as a better example, because it’s a second banana city that’s developing its own identity relative to Seattle.
There are a few cities in the Bay Area that have developed distinct personalities independent of SF, for example Berkeley. You may not care for Berkeley’s approach, but you have to admit it is distinctive.
Palo Alto also has a distinct vibe. I can remember years ago when it was one that made me want to go there; nowadays it is one that is repellent in the extreme, but it is distinctive.
No secondary city is ever going to be a major tourist destination; it could be a minor tourist destination, as in “While we’re in SF, let’s spend a day in SJ and look at the …” well, what would they look at?
I’m willing, from time to time, to go to Sacramento to visit the train museum, and Old Town, since it’s close to the train museum, but I wouldn’t go there otherwise. But what is there here like that? The Computer History Museum (in MV) and the Tech Museum, and History SJ.
I agree with johnmichael—let’s make SJ a pleasant place for the people who live here. But that includes not just paving the roads, but having interesting places to go.
What do we have here that makes us stand out? There are a number of things that could have been developed that have been quashed by the establishment: alternative rock (in the 1980s), automotive art in the form of low-riders, skateboarding, the flea market. Missed opportunities, all.
What’s left?
Interesting history, as in the neglected historical district, including neglected Pellier Park. And not only that, it includes the site where the disk drive was invented. And where’s the Disk Drive Museum?
Literary history, including particularly Jack London and the Beat writers. “Call of the Wild” begins at the College Park station. Jack Kerouac became a Buddhist at the corner of Market and San Fernando. And when is the Beat Literature Festival?
An incredible diversity of ethnic food, most of which (unlike SF) is priced for people with ordinary incomes. In particular a wealth of Vietnamese food that may be the best in the US.
(So it’s a pity that almost all the Vietnamese restaurants downtown, which used to be quite a center of them, were pushed out to make room for phony ethnic chains like P.F. Chang’s.)
And our biggest draw? This is Silicon Valley, hub of the technological universe! And what do we make of it? Well, the Tech Museum, and last summer we had 01SJ, and …?
This should be World Geek Central! Where is the cutting edge of technology?
Instead, here is a city that doesn’t believe that computers could be programmed to control traffic lights!
When the electronics flea market relocates from DeAnza College to the San Pedro Market, we may be getting somewhere. (And then maybe electron microscopy booths like in “Blade Runner”.)
Last I checked, Tom McEnery wasn’t the mayor anymore.
Also, why would anybody want to shop under the parking garage? Lively urban spaces aren’t defined by parking structures, anywhere.
“Also, why would anybody want to shop under the parking garage? Lively urban spaces aren’t defined by parking structures, anywhere.”
Urban environments are defined by various businesses, structures and living spaces all coming together in a patchwork nature. The market is not a planned community in Almaden. It is being fit into a space where it fits. Who cares if it merely abuts a garage?
Based on the number of new restaurants and other related retail grand openings in the last six months (and others that plan to open soon), downtown SJ appears to have more momentum and resilience to the poor economy than just about anywhere in this country. The proposed market would positively complement the last twenty years of downtown improvements and would come at at time when (oddly) the pace of retail development actually appears to be accelerating in the downtown core.
Maybe we’re looking at this thing backwards.
How many tourist destination cities started out with that goal? SF’s Fisherman’s Warf and Chinatown evolved organically as ethnic and economic enclaves. The same is true for Seattle’s Pike’s Market, New York’s Times Square and many other tourist destinations.
The goal should be to create an urban market that is, above all else, for San Joseans. Give me a reason to want to come downtown and shop there.If others discover it and travel agents start promoting it, great. But first things first.
As for the handful of people who like to tell us that “San Jose will never be…(fill in the blank)” I hope that they can someday visit a thriving downtown urban market so they can tell us how bad it is.
PS to JMOC: Improving downtown AND providing neighborhood services need not be an either/or proposition. But I do agree that the neighborhoods are not getting their fair share.
“Improving downtown AND providing neighborhood services need not be an either/or proposition. But I do agree that the neighborhoods are not getting their fair share.” Oh, but Council spends billions on downtown and only few million on rest of city
Sinking more tax billions into heavily tax subsidized money losing ( taxes spent vs taxes collected ) downtown while rest of San Jose pay taxes and is neglected is a bad decision since San Jose now has poorest city services, streets, parks, pools, public safety and billions deferred city maintenance
If Council would spend $1 in other neighborhoods for every $1 spent ( mostly wasted )on downtown – San Jose would soon be better place
This thread is really fascinating. I am relocating to downtown San Jose from Marin County. At first I was dreading leaving bucolic Marin for the South Bay. And until I found myself in the downtown area, this is just how I felt. The suburbs made me cringe but the downtown area has charm, history and potential. I am looking forward to living in an urban area and am anxious to take advantage of all that the downtown offers now and hopes to offer in the future. I think the urban market sounds promising and it may attract others like myself who are baffled by what seems to be a shortage of just what they are proposing: fresh foods, organic meats, interesting shops, and a vibrant and unique retail sector. You need to attract people to keep a place alive or bring it to life.