Editor’s Note
Single Gal is on vacation this week so we are repeating one of her very first columns from exactly two years ago on a subject that we think is still worth blogging about.
So what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Would more people want to live downtown if there were more to do? Or will people wait to see what happens downtown before they invest their money into apartments and lofts? I believe that if there were masses of families, young people and baby-boomers living downtown, that the retail and entertainment would have to come to feed the demand.
I have lived downtown for many years and I love it. I can walk to Zanotto’s to get groceries or Walgreen’s to fill a prescription. I can walk to the Improv, O’Flaherty’s and P.F. Chang’s for a show, dinner or drinks, and afterwards I never have to worry about driving. It’s a neighborhood feeling when you walk into a bar or a restaurant. And, there is always plenty of action right outside my front door.
What are perks to me, others might see as an inconvenience. I have to park in a garage and walk a few blocks to my apartment; I have to deal with more noise on Friday and Saturday nights due to the bar crowd and cruising. And if I visit the Starbucks on San Pedro Square, I am a certain to be surrounded by a few homeless people.
But is this appealing to people that live in San Jose? We seem to be programmed to prefer quiet homes on tree-lined streets, rather than lofts in the middle of the city. Maybe wooing San Joseans downtown is a hard sell. Will empty nesters or young families trade in a home for a condo like they do in other cosmopolitan cities? Maybe we should be focusing on young professionals who don’t care about peace and quiet. We will have trouble getting people to live downtown until we see them cashing in their garden for a balcony, their driveway for a parking garage, and their annoying neighbor for an occasional homeless person.
I am wondering if everyone who says, “We need more people living downtown,” would actually live downtown themselves. Here’s to hoping there is a shift in our mindset and masses of people start to see the allure of living in our city’s core. Or else we won’t ever get what we really want or need.
Downtown (and central San Jose in general) is a gem in this mass of low-density, post-WWII dullness called Silicon Valley. The older parts of a city are always the best, it seems. Young people nowadays realize this.
I think the goal should be to establish downtown as an urban retreat so that young people now and of future generations know of it and want to live there someday. Too many of my fellow twenty-somethings are unaware of what we have downtown and go to other cities to get meet their fixes of walkability and entertainment.
The current suburbanite zombies will not be swayed, but the spirited youth are not yet lost. We don’t shun the homeless or run from “thugs.”
Chicken and egg arguments are important in every circumstance. For example, Santa Clara City Council Member Jamie McLeod, the self appointed ethics person has not been forthcoming in her relationship with the anti stadium group, SANTA CLARA PLAYS FAIR. The Lantern has found a campaign picture with a map of Northern Santa Clara three years ago with McLeod, Mary Emerson, and Au Nguyen, though McLeod has denied heading up the anti stadium effort.
What? Vacation? But she lives in paradise!
My lord!!! Has it really been 2 years?
You don’t need to ask whether people are willing to live downtown. Rents are still pretty high, and vacancy rates are still pretty low. Apparently, there are a lot of folks willing to live downtown.
I guess no planning to put a guest blogger in place for today. Oh well, its sort of the theme for the city.
If anyone needs a vacation, its Single Gal.
I could just imagine Single Gal’s vaction….lots of socializing with the girls, drinking, chasing men, shopping, bars….oh wait a minute.