When Silicon Valley real estate baron Carl Berg was asked last week why he’s selling his multi-million-square-foot portfolio of buildings, he was quick to be precise on the reason. He reportedly said it’s “because I can’t stand the mayor of San Jose. I believe this city has the worst development environment in the United States.” This is very interesting.
Now I have a grudging admiration for Carl Berg. It goes back to 1983 when as a newly elected mayor, the city was facing pressure by some sharkskin developers, Chamber of Commerce types and labor acolytes to develop the Coyote Valley (yes, THAT Coyote Valley), and I was chairing a small committee to try and decipher the real from the hype in the many angles being proposed.
Berg was the single person who told the truth. Now it has been said that the truth is rarely plain and never simple, but Berg came close. He was the epitome of the straight shooter: credible, focused, and honest. I appreciated that assistance, and it helped us forge a development policy, building our tax base in Edenvale—where Berg had vast holdings—and North San Jose and downtown. He and others made a profit, the city developed the areas that made sense, and many cops, librarians and youth workers got hired.
Now why these rants against Chuck Reed and the city?
Did Berg prefer the system of pay as you go: hire the most unscrupulous former mayoral staffers and other hacks to push projects, coerce the staff, and cast reason to the wind? I do not suggest that he did that and hope that he did not. Certainly, he is too smart and too principled to think that anyone is served by such tawdry actions as San Jose has suffered recently. But he did give large and probably unethical, if not illegal, donations to the labor political action committees to subvert our campaign regulations. Who was served by that: good planning and good government? Hardly.
These are only a few questions to put to one of the bluntest and most successful men in the valley. I wish he would answer them and he can use this site as a forum. An invitation for a guest column is duly extended.
Poor Joe Rodriguez
Unlike a chief justice’s old definition of pornography, Joe Rodriguez would not know good art—historical or otherwise—if he saw it or it fell on him. According to his Mercury News article on Monday, he still thinks the brouhahas over the Fallon statue and Robert Graham’s “Plumed Serpent” were really about public input. If Joe believes that canard, he is incredibly dense; if being disingenuous, he is rather dangerous. Oh well, I guess Rodriguez prefers the bland tinker toy art around City Hall or the pathetic modern renditions we build to avoid the scourge of knowing anything about our past. Someone tell Rodriguez that we deserve more trenchant analyses and less pabulum for the mind.
2 – Why would anybody want to hide their displeasure of Gonzales? He was the worst thing to happen to SJ in modern (and maybe even past) history. He deserves all the disdain that anyone can muster towards him. If he never shows his face in SJ public life again it will to soon.
I am surprised that Joe Rodriguez is still at the Mercury News. Granted, it is terrible to be laid-off, but JR. should have been the number one candidate.
However, I have to admit that, apparently, the editors have toned down JR’s writing. He hasn’t written one of his trademark, “Everything is the white man’s fault”, columns in a while, but his columns are still trivial and irrelevant.
Nor has he ever made amends for his complete and utter travesty of an article regarding a flight from Reid-Hillview with an Hispanic pilot, and a local kid they were trying to “inspire”. This was a pure propaganda flight arranged by pilots to try and give RHV a positive spin, and JR fell for it hook, line, and sinker.
Rather than commenting on all the homes they flew over, and wondering if the noise pollution, lead pollution from GA fuel, lower quality of life and standard of living. and all the other negative effects from a recreational airport in the middle of a residential neighborhood was negatively impacting the, mostly Hispanic, residents of the neighborhood, he just regurgitated propaganda.
Amusingly, the kid they were trying to inspire left bored.
General RHV information:
http://www.reidhillview.com/
Satellite photo of RHV:
http://www.acme.com/mapper/?lat=37.332863&long;=-121.81981&scale=13&theme=Image&width=4&height=4&dot=Yes
RHV economic data:
http://www.reidhillview.com/#1
RHV lead pollution:
http://www.reidhillview.com/#9
Number of pilots (3477) who live in Santa Clara County:
http://www.reidhillview.com/#8
I’m not even remotely a Joe Rodriquez fan. The fact that he survived the latest round of cuts at the Merc makes understanding Media News’ logic difficult at best.
One positive aspect of his article is that he didn’t defend the plumed serpent. That’s very promising, as Rodriquez tends to reflect the views of the greater Hispanic community. The fact is, NOBODY finds the plumed serpent aesthetically pleasing. Yet why do I get the feeling that it would indeed become a political/public input issue if anyone tried to relocate this pile of crap over to the MHP where it belongs, behind its forboding walls and out of the view of the general public?
1) Berg is bitter because his planned rezoning would have brought nothing so close to a major pro soccer team to the city. He wanted more handouts like have been the norm for the past 50 years in the valley. Ironically, I think he used to own a previous incarnation of said team.
2) It’s just more Murky doing what they do: stirring shit. I doubt Mr. Rodriguez really thinks such, but pretending to think it (and be so GOSH DARN outraged) just might sell more papers.
3) Lastly, thanks for selling out our history with that hideous new Sharks logo and color scheme. I was worried that I may not get my comic book fix with the hectic demands of being a hockey fan, but you owners have me covered. I guess we’re getting expansions teams in both soccer and hockey next year.
Joe Rodriguez is a better writer than Tom McEnery. Joe Rodriguez appeals to the average person, he doesn’t use hard-to-understand words, such as, “acolytes, canard, trenchant and pabulum”.
I didn’t read the column that McEnery refers to, but I still would like to defend Joe Rodriguez. He was the only guy at the MERC to stand up and argue against the billion dollar hood ornament (aka the new city hall). It was Joe Rodriguez who recommended that we have a “virtual city hall,” with the council offices being located within the council districts, and have one central meeting place for council meetings etc. (What a great idea!).
However, I don’t appreciate Joe’s column title “East Side West Side.” There are really nice homes in East San Jose, and really run down areas in West San Jose. Quite frankly, I wish that the MERC would reassign Rodriguez to local politics. He’s a lot better than one of the reporters they have assigned to city politics right now…(I’ve read better written pieces in high school newspapers!)
Pete Campbell
If there was ever a columnist the Merc should have done everything in its power to hold onto, it was Steve Lopez. He didn’t focus on ethnic issues, he wrote very well about all kinds of things that appealed to the masses from the perspective of the common man. The LA Times is lucky to have him.
Joe Rodriguez is at best a waste of ink. It seems the Merc likes to hang onto substandard columnists. At least the pain of witnessing Leigh Weimers trying so ineptly to be clever is finalleigh over, no thanks to the Merc, btw.
Is it just me or is the Chronicle looking like a better option all the time now? And I never in a million years thought I’d feel that way.
Sheep get sheered; Pigs get fat; Hogs get slaughtered
Public sheep got tired of being sheered of taxes and San Jose’s future, while insider Pigs got fat and elected Reed to slaughter Coyote and Evergreen developers and business Hogs like Berg who do not want to give back to community
Berg is not selling his Evergreen property and still thinks an insider political deal can be done when public sheep are asleep
#4, the site you linked to is bogus anti-airport propaganda. Who was there first, the airport or the selfish people who want to close it down? If you don’t like the airport, don’t move into the neighborhood.
I live just north of downtown. I knew about SJC and I deal with it. The anti-RHV folks need to do the same.
Joe Rodriguez lost me several years ago when he refered to the police helicopter as the “ghetto bird”. In my opinion, the underlying tone of his writing is steeped in hyperbole of “white against brown”, and he comes off as being at least as racially biased as those he rants against. How the Mercury thinks he is an asset to their staff is beyond me as his one-sided subjective and predicatable writing has alienated and polarized former readers of the Mercury, and in a larger and more destructive sense, done the same thing to segments of our community.
Reid-Hillview Airport will be renamed Chuck Reed-Hillview Airport. Plaza de Cesar Chavez Park will be renamed Plaza de Cindy Chavez Park. Santa Clara Street will be renamed Joe Rodriguez Boulevard. All changes will be voted on at the next City Council meeting.
Planning Commissioner
It never fails to amaze me how the dynamics of development and politics meld together, for good or bad.
Reid-Hillview has been a local institution since the 1920’s. It was surrounded by orchards, farmland and the old Hillview Golf & Country Club.
As the years passed, developers buildt housing and retail adjacent to the airport. Residents who have purchased homes in the area have greatly benefitted – more house for less money because of the proximity to the airport.
Now that they’ve settled in, they want the airport to move on. Doesn’t seem quite fair that they bought on the cheap and now want an area free of airport traffic.
Wait Tom! JR is a columnist for YOUR paper, the Murky News! Back to being good guy, bad guy; which way will it be finalleigh (ugh!) Same with C. Berg today. (JR, poorly informed like most Murky pretend reporters doesn’t know that a qualified citizen art committee picked another more grand Graham statue, but the usual insiders had the final word). On the subject of good/bad, in/out and the “scourge of history in SJ”, where “is” you on the Podgorsek/Jensen house moved onto the RD lot at 3rd and William—a funky old historical house to be spruced at great taxpayer expense—along with the underground garage and brand new office building. SJ Planners had high a high density residential project approved for that site, but Cindy queered the deal for Uni Neighborhood insiders, and had to buy out the developers and also buy the triplex and lot on the corner for a make-work social welfare project—a “halfway house” for the teens roaming downtown streets. Lots of “helping professional” jobs for SEIU. Just wondering if you’re going to Ken and Linda’s open house to help celebrate taking the property off the tax rolls and putting it into the new budget. George Green
Tom: why do you give the guy from the newspaper any ink he writes about (TACO TRUCKS)
how is he supposed to know anything about art?
Mr. McEnery
The “system of pay as you go”? Although you have used vague phrasing and subtle terminology, I have seen similar words before. In past posts you have tried to conceal, cover and cloak your true views. Try as you may, you cannot hide your displeasure of former mayor Ron Gonzales.
George Berlin
#8,
You are right. I have to give JR credit for the distributed City Hall idea. It appeared to be a good idea, and certainly made, and still makes, more sense than wasting all that money on a new City Hall.
#15 (George Green): You are mistaken on a number of points in your post.
First of all, it’s Lisa (not Linda) Jensen, as in the planning commissioner.
Second, the project at 3rd & William is for an EHC teen homeless shelter that previously was located on N. 5th St. but was displaced by the city hall project. It’s not a project of the University Neighborhoods Coalition (UNC)—a name you have butchered in the past—, although several UNC leaders, including Jensen, were publicly supportive. As, too, was I.
Third, the old house moved to the site is the historic Greninger house that was displaced by the proposed convention center expansion. The redevelopment agency was required to save, move and restore it any event. As reported at the time in the Mercury News, it was my idea that it be incorporated into the EHC project on 3rd & William. So you can blame me.
Tom:
I remember a couple of weeks ago you said you were going to comment on the DA’s decision to drop charges against Tony Arreola and Sean Kali-Rai.
Did someone get to you or did you realize that Pandori screwed up in the worst way?
One other point on the EHC Project on 3rd/William.
EHC ran a very successfull and neighborhood friendly program for homeless teens called Our House that was in the footprint of the New City Hall, so the city was required to move Our House to a new site.
For Our House to be successful, it had to be located in the Downtown Core. This site was one of the very few sites that met the requirements and fulfilled the City’s obligation as a result of displacing them for the new City Hall.
On a personal note, I am very proud of my work on this project with other neighborhood leaders, EHC, and the City.
Everytime I pass this project, I feel very good about it and the good it will do for many homeless teens in Downtown while being neighborhood friendly.
#16 I am not certain how a story about Carl Berg got to be about public art, but that is another matter all together. The real story on the snake is that it was a wealthy and powerful Latino artist telling San Jose to shove off in far less polite terms.
The artist, then and possibly still was/is married to a Hollywood heavyweight. He was contracted to do two different projects (not one) before this one and each time his artistic presentations were challenged by various factions resulting in the politicization of his work. To his credit, that was an embarrassing chapter in San Jose’s public art debate and he earned his ire legitimately in my opinion.
When the final work was set, it was the supreme compromise. It was part of settling a dispute regarding the Politically Correctness of the Fallon Statue and the fact that contractual commitments had been canceled by the City of San Jose after having made them. This was the “replacement” project to make him whole financially. The artist’s ire at how San Jose and its leaders handled all this was confirmed when the final executed contract gave him the right to finish and install the piece without the participation of any of the Public Arts team in San Jose. It was under wraps as it was being fabricated. What was finally delivered was not a bronze snake but a fibreglass or concrete work, – I am not certain. That change was never approved, but his contract gave him authority to make changes so it was not subject to challenge either. His pay was not altered by using vastly cheaper materials. I contend that its resemblance to a less savory item was hardly an accident. He planted a politically correct turd in San Jose, left town with his cash ,and you can read what you will into that. I think it is pretty obvious.
Well now you’ve gone and done it. All you nameless Villagers that have so much to say but want some one else to stand up for it.
I’m reminded of the mean bullies that used to throw rocks at us as we ran the gauntlet from school to home.
Nameless and faceless you all must be their offsprings.
Wow, does that feel good or what? I did’nt know I had those thoughts inside of me. Thanks for the release.
I have expressed my thoughts about San Jose’s public Arts history on this web site many times.
When Joe came to town, I met with him. I tried to tell Joe the politics of who we really are as a village. He probably thought I was wierd and out of touch.
Some times I’m a bit hard on Joe, But anyone that could make Tacos a 7 week column, and make lots of local hispanics squirm about their hispanic denial got my vote. Those GI Forum guys wanted to lynch Joe. I look back at that and laugh. You Go Joe!
The bronze Fallon statue that was rammed up the agenda of the arts committee and the Plastic Snake that was rammed up the agenda of the Redevelopment Agency, should be the issues here not a guy that did what his editors asked of him. Tom had to scare the hell out of the Cisco kid to get him to put up horses.
He ran for Mayor.
Who was the commitee to select the Tonka Toys that are so out of place in front of our Bird Cage Rotunda. Look that up!
Between the fallon’s Horse’s butt and the new condos, is grass instead of The Pellier Park prune trees, that were there one day, and gone the next. Who makes these choices.
We walked out to the airport this morning as we do 3 days a week. What we observed was that the two riders are headed out of town. Where are they going, Santa Clara?
We will be walking to see The Plastic Snake friday morning. I see that it has been encased in fencing. Why? Could we possibly have another Donner Building fire? I had the thought that maybe we could just leave the baricades up to process all of the illigal aliens. And make this a deportation point
What a travesty we have become. Our downtown is such a wonerful place to visit, only to let some hairbrained politician turn it into a race track.
Joe, if you are listening, there’s not much left to read in the Mercury News that makes any sence. Political art has no place in our Village , That is why I belive those that subject us to their egos must wear their art.
I will leave you with this thought. All of the Artists that tried to be successful here had to go to other cities to gain validation. MHC and The City are in need of a new focus on art.
Tom, you and Blanca should lead this resurgence of the arts in our city, since it was you and Blanca that have installed the cities two major pieces with in our city limits that have created such a stir.
Gil Hernandez
.
RS, I am with you 100% on your statements in post #21. Considering the artist’s motives it seems the most appropriate thing that could happen with his work would be to scoop it up and plop it in HIS front yard. The citizens of SJ have lived with his pile of crap in their front yard for quite long enough. Throw it in a giant plastic grocery bag and discard it NOW.
Good Morning Village San Jose,
So Much is changing these days. I used to awaken on a Saturday morning and go out to the front porch or curb and pick up my Mercury News with a cup of coffee in hand. Now upon awakening, I unleach the power of the web by a click of the button.
I get on San Jose Inside and I find all of the characters interacting and expressing their views very real and interesting. That led me to participate as well.
This morning for instance, I am contemplating the dilemna that the San Jose Police are in. It has made me open up to the probable cause by police of so many other situations in the past years that have created criticisum of those of us that visit the down town. The recent closure of Taste, the recent herding of the Hispanic folks that attended Tom’s Comvention Center for a good time dancing.
My eyebrows raised when I learned the plan for San Pedro Square. I was happy that the Tropicana folks kicked butt.
I felt a sence of safety when the Stainless Steel Man left our village mayor’s office.
Today I am feeling the tension of what is occurring at the downtown political level. Perhaps Joe was not to far off when he advocated Virtual City Hall Down Town with Council offices in the Council districts. Sam Licardo has it all. A new stainless steel city hall, San Pedro square, The Tech, Museum of Art, Discovery Museum, Redevelopment Agency sponsored busineses and Hotels, The Conventon Center named after Tom, the HP Pavillion, Superior Court, an only used once Knight Ridder sign, Martin Luther King library, San Jose State university, Henrys High life, Tonka Toy sculptures.
Now the question, What has Nora Compos got, besides the MHPG, Sal Si Puedes, Tropicana, Prush Park, Mi Pueblo, Reed’s Rath and school districts that have been the cause of so many investigations with 60% students drop out rates.
Here’s my point, I love San Francisco, I love Santa cruz. BUT I don’t live there.I love our down town, but I don’t live there. I don’t want Bars in my neighborhood, that was the redevelopment’s Idea 20 years ago for the down town.
I have become very concerned about this pall that has taken hold in the down town of Herding the unwanted demographics out of town once the money is in the sack.
It saddens me to have to express this to print. But there it is. These are simply my feeling on this beautiful Saturday morning in our Village that have been blessed with a bronze Fallon Horses Statue and the Plastic Snake Quetzalcoatle.
Thank you Tom and Blanca.
The Village Black Smith