Well, the glass seems half empty—way empty. Lew Wolff will not bring the A’s to downtown (hey, Rick, gambling here in Casablanca!). The Rep is in perilous condition and other groups are crying “help” and lining up to get a bit of succor. The city leadership is looking like the interim government in Baghdad. Our grand prix took a beating on the P.R. front not seen since Nixon’s final days. Phew—what a few months! Look for a plague of locusts on the horizon.
But, take heart, citizens, it is always darkest before the dawn and, make no mistake about it, the dawn is nigh. What we have here, primarily, is a failure to communicate. Our city is on the verge of a great rebirth; San Jose has some of its most spectacular days just around the corner. Perhaps we ought to spell it out, since spelling, let alone math, doesn’t seem high on the City Hall priority list. O-u-r c-i-t-y i-s o-n t-h-e r-e-b-o-u-n-d.
Just imagine if the energy that propelled people to our city from all over the globe could be channeled to moving our community forward, and that if the Ciscos and Intels engaged in, and did not shy away from, city involvement, what a contribution they could make? Just think of the possibilities if the crowds that thronged to the Jazz Festival, Obon Festival, Zero One—and the myriad of cultural, historic and community events that make this place so unique—were harnessed in a coherent, understandable way.
If there has been any failure in our city in the last years, it has been of ethics—and communication and will power. Our leaders have been unable to paint a picture worthy of our people that is understandable to them. Our citizens have been forced to read tawdry headlines and decry the state of the city. But now is the time to recognize that this will end soon. In a little over sixty days, the new mayor-elect will have a unique opportunity—with a very low bar—of resetting and reordering the agenda of our city, and telling our community what is on the horizon. It has been done before and people again are longing for someone to begin that simple, yet profound, undertaking. Our diverse population will be given a treat not recently seen: a city that knows how. It is not without some trepidation that I say this, for many of the best no longer work at City Hall, but it can change quickly. San Jose is awaiting the transition from this long nightmare. It is ready to explode with a positive energy not seen in a long time. It is on the horizon and cannot come too soon.
This was written by Tom Mc, not John – right?
Not bad satire…
Good to see you with your Irish up, Tom!
Maybe the next mayor will heed some of your wisdom—if not catch some of your visceral fire—and call together some of us diehards to form a Blue Ribbon panel on the future of the City—you know, the way Tony Blair did to create the “Cool Britainia” project. I’d sign on if you would…just an idea…
San Jose seems to get stuck in a pattern or rule by the termites. Too many people who grew up here don’t have the ambition to climb on and compete in the hard-charging beehive of silicon valley. They prefer to import the ambitious from asia, europe, and other areas of the US to make the fortunes and then live off the wealth that is created by them while doing a terrible job of providing anything of service. They don’t even do anything to keep the environment heathy for the busineses that make their privilege possible.
It’s like the fleas think they’re more important than the dog.
Tom: it’s nice to be optimistic, but one must temper the optimism with reality.
This great sea change you proclaim cannot be brought about by promoting one of our spineless councilmembers to mayor, yet having the remaining pretty much useless city council in place, even if we keep Les on for four years.
Are you aware of a magic wand that none of us know about that will make our “leaders” truly leaders.
And what we absolutely don’t need is another Blue Ribbon Commission, made up of the usual suspects, to sit around over some free lunches and brainstorm.
To get this town (we’re way far away from being a city yet) moving, we need a whole bunch of folks with brains, spines, and ethics in The Taj Gonzal. We need leadership. Sorry, but I don’t see it in the current crop.
As a former partner of mine used to quip: “You can’t send ducks to eagle school”.
JMO, you responded to a post last week and advised that this TOWN still has a couple of generations to go before it will actually become a city. I couldn’t agree more, and it’s all that we can reasonably expect. The downtown area stopped growing and began a 25 year cycle of deterioration when this town’s population was less than 100K. By the time Tom started pumping some life back into this town’s core, the population was several times larger but downtown was a ghost of its small time former self. We simply don’t have the size and scope of a downtown that would normally be associated with a city of nearly 1 million people, and it’s going to take another 50 years easily before we get one. Contrary to what has been stated above, Chuck Reed isn’t going to accomplish much in pushing downtown forward so things will be at a virtual standstill for at least another four years. Either way, I’m not going to live to see downtown as a vibrant daytime and evening destination or cultural center, that much I know.
The sad truth is that until we have a world-class city mayor and council we are not going to be a world-class city. Certainly neither mayoral candidate is at that level, although I do believe we have a better chance of rising out of the morass with Reed than with Chavez. The current council is basically hopeless. It is hard to believe these folks are the best we have to offer—they generally behave like the town council of Mayberry (no offense meant to Mayberry) than of a large city.
Also, until we change the mindset of the council and the citizens, we will continue our small town ways. Unfortunately, the good intentions of district elections have served as our undoing. There is no city-wide vision anymore, only what can be done for my district. Sad to say, but it is time to dump the districts so we can regain our city and plan for the entire city and not just piece by piece in the current incoherent manner we are doing.
Obviously it will take a long time to repair the wreckage the current mayor and council have left us with. Many of us will not see the results in our lifetimes, but hopefully San Jose will be a better place for our children.
So, thanks to Gonzales and crew for leaving a legacy of distrust and damage and thanks to Tom for his optimism that we will overcome the disaster that has been the past 7 years.
JohnMichael—I was measured in my reference to Cool Britainia because that ensemble was composed of mavericks, heretics, rebels and malcontents sick of the status quo. Since I include myself in there somewhere—as I bet you do—it’s not a business-as-usual proposition. We may need a little Creative Destruction to clean the barn out.
Although I tend to agree with many of today’s comments, I also realize that we need to change our attitude about San Jose if it is to ever get off the ground. We once had Tom as our young, optimistic mayor who was able to lead and inspire us. Right now, my best bet for leadership lies in Sam Liccardo. Let’s get behind him, he’s ethical and committed to bettering San Jose. I’d really like to see him in the mayor’s seat in 4 or 8 years. Maybe we all need to reread The Power of Positive Thinking by Peale.
Is San Jose seeing the light at the end of the tunnel – or the Oncoming train / economic crash?
Intel layoffs 10,000 people
San Jose continues to spend money it does not have – on things that are not essential city services
Housing prices remain high due to restrictive land use policies killing jobs
Non Profits line up for millions more in tax subsidies / bailouts
Both Mayor candidates talk reform and ficsal responsiblility which few believe while Council spends and spins, spends and spins
Economic development is justified with paybacks no one believes and does not create local high paying jobs
The glass has a hole in it leaking taxpayers money and local jobs
Unfortunately, few that will occupy City Hall come 2007 and even fewer citizens of San Jose share the vision of the gleaming new city on the hill. And none that I see on the horizon, not in the mayor’s office nor the council chambers, have the charismatic ability to sell the populace on the possibilities you set forth here, Mayor Tom.
To most voters, Downtown Redevelopment is something we tried 20 years ago that failed. Why continue to support a failure? Just let it die and spend the money in my neighborhood instead.
Here’s a better idea. Disband the city. Turn the greater city of San Jose into the towns of Willow Glen and Evergreen and Edenvale. Let them elect their own mayors. Let them set their own budgets. They are already controlling our city’s priorities.
Mr. McEnery,
Respectfully, a correction…Lew Wolff COULD NOT legally bring the A’s to San Jose. You forget that the City of San Jose (and SCCo for that matter) is enslaved to San Francisco and the Giants. Peter Magowan is our Master!! We will never have a Major League Baseball Team because (due to MLB’s stupid territorial rules) WE ARE BANNED FROM HAVING MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL!! RIP Baseball San Jose. Oh well, pretty soon we’ll just have to get on 880 and travel a few clicks past the county line to see our beloved San Jose A’s of Fremont.
Wishful has captured the situation at City Hall well. If I’m not mistaken, it was Merc sports writer Mark Purdy who cited this affliction as the reason this town doesn’t already have a MLB team. All it takes is the equivalent of an annoyed glance our direction by SF leaders or Giants owners to shoot down the feeble attempts by local baseball boosters who apparently are as spineless as your average council member. If SJ wants the A’s downtown, or just in town, then some mad as hell people should be filing suit to make it happen. Nah, that takes cajones. We’ll let Fremont build a big hotel and some restaurants by the new ballpark and enjoy all the revenue instead. I’m not even much of a sports fan but am outraged by the arrogance associated with the ridiculous territorial rights that make absolutely no geographic sense.
Downtown would have been alot better had the city not spend so much on it($3billions). It would have grown organically. The city would have been proud itself. Tom and all other mayors screwed up downtown by demolishing the old buildings, tearing up streets for trolley, spending money on projects that failed, and not listening to what people desire. Downtown is a total failure, and people of San Jose are paying for it, interms of pride. They’re not happy at all about their city and its failing downtown.
Re-Mayor Tom in ‘10!
#14 – Do like your thought of an organically grown downtown. Always thought it was a mistake that a business must have redevelopment’s blessing to set up shop in downtown. Obviously, they’ve not made wise decisions. It doesn’t seem American to me that a property owner pays taxes on his parcel and cannot lease or rent it to whom he chooses. I can think of one property that has sat vacant for years, it’s been improved, had bids from Payless and others, but redevelopment ruled. The only income the property owner has had for years is from the parking lot.
No question that the RDA’s systematic destruction of old commercial blocks has erased any uniqueness or personality from the downtown core. The Knight-Ridder building replaced an historic office tower from which the nation’s first radio broadcast was transmitted. You’d think that such a building would be considered significant in a place like the “Capital” of Silicon Valley. And this happened under Tom’s watch. That’s just one example of RDA out of control. Block after block that could have offered a real version of the fakeness that is Santana Row was leveled and we have nothing to show for it. I believe it was also under Tom’s watch that the City insisted there be no option on the trolley system for an express bypass of downtown for some trains. So every lousy train crawls through downtown, which has effectively decreased ridership by forcing commuters to sit through the excrutiatingly slow creep through downtown, and it’s clear from the ridership figures that they are having none of that. Another non-organic force feeding that has shaped the downtown area since the mid 80’s. We’re stuck with what remains among the sterility (are neon signs still banned?) and need to make the best of it. That will take some vision, a commodity sorely lacking at City Hall over the decades except for Tom’s stint, which gave us the beginnings of a skyline, but at great cost both in dollars and inventory of historic commercial blocks. So brace yourselves for more of this contrived personality BS downtown. The real deal, the soul of this town, is gone forever.
#15—Years ago a friend suggested signs saying ” Draft McEnery.”
Still stuck on getting a major league team are we?
Can’t get enough of that sterile, corporate baseball experience? Juiced up millionaire prima-donnas in cleats, 20 dollars to park, 8 dollars for a Bud light, and so on?
The minor league experience is way more fun.
Look at Raleigh-Durham area. Basically our sister city on the east coast. They’ve got a team – the Durham Bulls – ever hear of ‘em? They’ve got quite a nice park too.
Let’s see:
– Durham has a minor league team.
– San Jose has a minor league team.
– Durham has a nice little 10,000 seat stadium for their team.
– San Jose has er…
Is there anyone at SJ city hall that attempts to learn from what other cities are doing right?
Tom,
You wrote that in sixty days the new mayor-elect will be “…telling our community what is on the horizon.”
That almost sounds like a vision. Our two candidates have been on the campaign trail for months and we have not yet to heard any substantial vision for San Jose.
Look at the web sites. No sign of any vision there. The latest addition to Chavez’s website is her accusation Reed knew about the mayor’s “secret deal”. Reed’s website has the results of a recent poll.
We need to hear from the candidates now exactly how they will move San Jose forward, not in 60 days.
San Jose is about to lose its minor league team too. Watch for them to move to a brand new stadium in Livermore in 2008 or 2009. That is unless improvements to Municipal Stadium are done that satisfy the SF Giants organization. And from what I hear it won’t take much. But does City Hall have the stomach for that? Or are their heads still stuck in the Major League clouds?
RIPavilion – Thanks for that depressing update.
Let’s check our kid fun list here:
– pools are closed.
– parks and recreation are on maintenance life support
– bowling alleys are being demolished left and right
– school playgrounds are now locked up (at least in D1) all summer and now on nights and weekends
– and now the SJ Giants are leaving.
Put an end to RDA and this downtown taxdollar drain or bust up SJ into small pieces.
Enough already.
Steve – Your comments are Right on – No Mayor candidate is willing to express their actual vision or the deals that have been done for San Jose Where are specifics on how they will solve our well known problems – San Jose back room done deal politics as usual – keep the public in the dark until after the election when the real ” done deals ” will come out and the political paybacks will occur as usual
And they wonder why the public is angry and does not trust either Mayor candidate or most City Council
There’s no downtown because the Council is districted into Ten Tinies. Prof Terry’s idea to allow “maximum representation” with 10 REALLY SMALL people, not 5 citywide BIG people, is an ongoing disaster with no end in sight. Since most voters don’t vote, and those who do pay very little attention, the unions minions can easily control all but a few council seats. Their agenda: “more money for less work”. Their agenda certainly includes NO vision for the city, just advantages for themselves. And then there’s the neighborhood associations, two or three people pretending to rep each neighborhood, promising their council member votes in return for their NIMBY strategies. There’s no vision for San Jose because it’s really just ten neighborhoods, not a city. Even if by chance one or two districts elect a non-union non-neighborhood quality person they’ve got the
rag dolls to deal with. Ain’t gonna work. The only way to make a city out of the ruins is to get rid of Prof Terry’s poli-sci experiment, and how could that ever happen with the one million mostly just neighborhood voters so entirely fragmented? Elect Cindy, a Prof Terry protege, and Tiny will be celebrated for 4 more years. Sam, Chuck and Pete at least aren’t dots—but they’ll never get past the “Strong Neighborhoods” that make the idea of a real San Jose someday so weak. And how come Tom can’t figure this out?
George Green
Downtown was demolished years ago under Mayor Tom and only very naive people who have no knowledge about successful national retail are still beating the build retail downtown dead horse Downtown does not have consumer demand or income to support anything except very limited retail, workday / night resturants and 20-30’s clubs until San Jose rebuilds downtown and attracts higher income residents who will spend money downtown – Build it and they will come is a money losing deal for cities or successful retailers and has been for years
Santana Row would never of happened downtown even with tens of millions of RDA subsidies – just ask anyone who knows basics about successful national retail store site selection – which is not some local mon and pop retail store person
San Jose / RDA destroyed downtown years ago and then approved building Retail at Valley Fair, Jobs in North San Jose, Houses in South San Jose, Government on North First so there was no longer a downtown
George – Get your facts right – This was almost all done by city wide elected Council members before district elections The building of a disfunctional and unsustainable downtown was pushed by naive downtown advocates who ignore basic common sense and economics and has not worked for decades after millions of wasted taxpayers dollars
Labor’s Cindy Chavez is turning around downtown with new higher income residents and successful retail shopping center on Coleman not lets waste more money on downtown Chamber song
Yeah RIPavilion,
Thanks for the depressing note. The way you see it, we should continue to kiss up to San Francisco and the Giants by making improvements for their SINGLE A baseball stadium (Raleigh-Durham at least has AAA ball). They wouldn’t allow us to have a real baseball team, God forbid they take our little Giants away…HOW RIDICULOUS! I say let them go to Livermore! I’d rather travel a million miles to see REAL MAJOR LEAGUE SPORTS than go see small-town ball…the Single-A Giants play a team from VISALIA for Christ sake! While we’re at it, let’s also get rid of our fake-indoor football team, ABA Skyrockets, and lacrosse team.
Tom:
To quote a popular song from the 50’s.
Dreeeeeam. Dream Dream Dreeeam.
Dreeeam.
All I have to do is dreeeeaam.
Sorry, but I do not sees your dreams coming true with the current slate of candidates.
George
There was a time when I figured things out relatively well. Progress is painful. Special interests have to be put in their place often, not allowed to set the agenda of the City. Don’t blame Labor; they filled the void our spineless business community left. There is much that can happen right w. a district Council, but you need some ideas and a lot of implementation. Our city staff is not even as good as the interim gov. in Bagdad – they need a ‘big’ upgrade. Oh, and for the other comment about old bldg. – I preserve them: see the Peralta Adobe, Fallon House, Museum of Art and San Pedro Sq. ( this one on my nickel ). San Jose will survive and outlast our sorry current leadership. TMcE
27 – Tony D…get your nose out of the air. It’s obvious you haven’t even tried our little minor league team. Are you too “big time” for minor league baseball? I’ll tell you this, 2000-3000 people per night aren’t too big time for it. They come out, they enjoy the barbecque, they enjoy the entertainment, they enjoy the close proximity to the game. They enjoy the attitude of the young players who aren’t too “big time” to sign an autograph. They enjoy seeing the next generation of San Francisco Giants and say “I saw them when”…including our home-grown Kevin Frandsen, the Giants second baseman of the future. And I hear people say over and over “I went, I loved it, I’ll go back”.
But that’s OK, it’s not “big time” enough for you, Tony D. Let it die, like everything else in this city.
What’s really depressing is that the SF Giants aren’t asking for anything really major at SJ Muni. Just some expanded training and locker facilities. That’s all. They’re not demanding a major capital-intensive overhaul. Just some simple action is all that it will take to save this community entertainment resource. Will we do it?
Let’s quit whining about the A’s and let’s start making real economic investments in San Jose. Let’s bring real jobs to downtown. The Nvidia deal sounds great and the land purchased for a ballpark, um, excuse me, I mean “housing”, would be perfect to build a few hip towers to house tech start-ups. SF SoMa is not booming because of PacBell park. No, the restaurants, bars, and new Whole Foods are packed with tech workers driving the next Web 2.0 bubble with their desire to be located near mass transit. Let’s not build up housing around our transit centers, only to have our residents hop a train to a job in another city. San Jose needs to stop being the bedroom of Silicon Valley and start being the capital.
Anyone know what ever happened with the NanoSolar deal? Is SJ bothering to recruit this exciting new industry?
Mark # 6: sadly true. Back when Eulipia first went white table cloth, I was dowtown a lot. At that time I had some hope, especially after Chief McNamara’s crew cleared the horde of hookers out of what is now SoFA.
But as I aged, I noticed little change that would truly make downtown a 24 hour venue. The clubs catered solely to the college crowd. Shops closed due to a lack downtown residents. A downtown can’t live off visiting conventioneers. You can’t expect a market like Zanottos, which charges 25% or more higheer prices for the same goods as any other market to survive off a low income population base.
I still believe the dowtown “revival” was started backwards. It should have begun where it is now finally heading—higher density, nice housing.
#31 Nanosolar is going to Santa Clara. San Jose did not have the right type of space needed nor the incentives available that SC offered.
The future of the council doesn’t look too promising either…does anyone have an opinion about Yeager’s seat?
JMO, I agree, the housing options that will soon become available in various downtown locations will help the process. It’s kind of a Catch-22 as nobody would have been likely to go for this type of housing 20 years ago considering the state of downtown at the time so it’s been a lose/lose proposition that might finally be turning around towards win/win with the residential towers and CIM project’s completion. But there’s a looooooong way to go.
Local,
The D6 race doesn’t look promising much less a race. Most candidates haven’t figured out that Willow Glen is not the only neighborhood in D6. Only a third of the candidates can be found on the web and even then their messages are confusing at best.
RIPavilion,
You just don’t get it, do you. Single A baseball in a city of almost 1 million!? That’s ridiculous!! And what has the Muni done to “revitalize” the surrounding Senter Rd/Alma St. area…absolutely nothing! A MLB ballpark in Downtown San Jose would have done wonders for revitalizing our city’s core (much like ballparks in Baltimore and San Diego have done). But unfortunately, we will never realize this because San Jose is the only major American city BANNED from having a Major League Baseball team…and in the end this is the whole point of my posts! Look, I realize the A’s aren’t coming to San Jose, but don’t try to sell me small-town ball better suited for cow-towns in the Central Valley!
By the way RIPavilion, I did go to a SJ Giants game about a month ago (got free tickets at Costco). They were playing the Visalia Oaks (pop. 107,000). The game was cute, the BBQ was decent, and the atmosphere was definetely small-town USA…San Jose has gone way beyond that status RIPavilion!
#26
“Cindy is turning around downtown”? No other council member has voted to destroy more historic buildings than Cindy. If this is turning around the downtown, I would have to say she is steering it in the wrong direction!
#32
As for Yeager’s seat, I don’t know all the candidates but I find Steve Tedesco to be honest, smart and open.
#27
Until we get a major league team, we should do all we can to keep the SJ Giants. A big financial draw for SJ no, small town yes, but that is what makes it fun for my family and me. We were there the night Kevin Frandsen hit the “cycle”. Parking+tickets+food =$65, we went to see him play in SF it cost me $220.
It is worth it for me to pay that to see our hometown boy play in SF, but if he isn’t playing, you’ll find me at the SJ games.
I’ll take the small town USA ambience anyday over the phony, puffed-up, overpriced nonsense of the “big leagues.”
C’mon guys. Can we get off our respective High Horses here and reject these tired assumptions that a city is defined by its central area shopping district and its elected representatives? Those are just two of a million elements and institutions that make a city what it is: what about its schools, its streets, its neighborhoods, its religious organizations, its small business organizations, its ymca’s, its bookclubs, its markets, its knitting groups, its movie theaters, its restaurants, its taco trucks…I could go on. We obsess about politics and downtown because it’s what our local media focuses on. Get out of the matrix: cancel the merc, abnadon your car, and take a walk and find out where we really live.
and p.s.: if we lose the san jose giants every political leader in this town for the past ten years should perform public penance.
I think we have captured here in some of these latest posts, why SJ is still the world’s largest cow town. If the posts here are any indication, people like living in a cow town and damnit, they want to keep it that way!
#10: thank you for the sentence I have been looking for to describe my quarrel with many on this blog: “San Jose continues to spend money it does not have – on things that are not essential city services”. I am of the firm belief that any governmental body must spend money only on ESSENTIAL services, unless they have a surplus after taxing fairly. I define ESSENTIAL city services to exclude the arts groups who cannot run in the black as SJ Opera has done since its inception. They are very important, but they are not , in my view, ESSENTIAL.That will surely bring down the wrath of many upon me; for instance, the bicycle commuters who don’t believe pothole-free roads are an essential city service, the PAC crowd that believes any building they find worth saving must be saved at taxpayer expense, and the salamander lovers who believe that the 8 salamanders counted at The San Juan Oaks Golf Course over the last year should stop any further development of that property. We shall have to continue to agree to disagree on those priorities.
Many of us here have a pet project/goal/wish list. T J Rodgers described many of those when he said, as quoted in last weeks Metro :“A coercive utopia, for Rodgers, is when you’re willing to implement YOUR good ideas by forcing OTHERS to do them.” In the same article, Mr. Rodgers also decried “the high ethical and moral ground as DEFINED by others”. [Pardon the caps please—I don’t know how to get italics, as in the article, when emailing/blogging].
The folks on this blog are an intelligent and caring crowd, for the most part. What many do not understand, however, is what Mr. Rodgers decried, which is the tyranny of those who believe they have the high moral ground, and that those who do not subscribe to their notions are somehow morally bankrupt.
Van Zandt’s post about how a salamander may save the world is facially extremely compelling. WOW! What if a salamander could cure cancer?? How cool is that??!! It’s like that Sean Connery movie of a couple of decades ago about how something in the Amazon Rain Forest was the cure for everything. Compelling stuff, hard to decry in theory, but really just a shot in the dark in the final dispassionate analysis. I’m molre Darwinian myself re the extinction of various species.
I believe and hope that although Chuck Reed may take a close second to Jim Beall on the charisma scale, that he is what we need right now to get this town back on the right track, as defined by the majority of its citizenry.
If and when we have surplus funds to satisfy the needs of those who can’t put together enough resources to bring them what they want, then and only then should the city fill that gap.
Somehow, I missed Wishful #7’s post until I read Mark T’s#13. But Wishful does beg the question, I believe, for most residents of San Ohaze—that anywhere near the majority of the residents of San Ohaze have even the slightest desire to become a WORLD CLASS CITY. I would like to think that I am wrong; but I remain of the firm belief that 90% of the residents of this town could not care less about becoming a WORLD CLASS CITY if that means pouring another $3billion into our pitifully small downtown core.
An aside to those who would criticize this as MY view of San Jose. I am not spouting what I think should happen. I am spouting what I firmly believe is the sense of the citizenry of this town. San Jose may be the largest population TOWN in the civilized world. Even LA is no longer a town; but we are.
Mark T #6 may have nailed it—we need another 50 years.
RIPavilion #11: I agree that balkanizing the city by enacting district elections was a bad thing for moving forward. But disbanding the city and making each district be a mini-city is going in the wrong direction. Abolish district elections if you want this to be a city, instead of a collection of mini-constituencies. Citywide council elections should be returned to us, so that thjose elected work for the CITY, not their neighborhood. No more one trick ponies.
Fan #14: As to your comment that “, tearing up streets for trolley, spending money on projects that failed, and not listening to what people desire,”, I could not agree more. I’d just add, “Stupid trolley that goes from nowhere to nowhere lots of folks want to go, and at a snail’s pace downtown” to your comment.
Just exactly what old buildings dowtown have been demolished, except the Morkovitz? Too few old unreinforced masonry buildings that cannot be made seismically safe at anything but a prohibitive cost have NOT been demolished.
Mark T #42: I would not use the term “cow town”, but I have been preaching since this blog opened that SJ is not yet a city, and not likely to be one anytime soon. I remain confident that 90% of its residents could not care less about making it a city. That’s why district elections are favored. That’s why few care about downtown. That’s why little elitist neighborhood groups like the Willow Glen Homeowners Assoc. thrive.
Tom McE and others want to drag these folks kicking and screaming into BIG-CITYDOM. They ain’t buyin’ it.
Me, I’m anxiously awaiting the completion of the CIM tower near The Rep (which may be gone before that tower is opened for occupancy), so I can live in walking distance from 80% of what I do.
42 – I don’t think it’s necessariliy that we want to be a “cow town”. I think we’ve already lost so much of our heritage as “The Valley of Heart’s Delight” that we want desperately to hang onto whatever’s left. We didn’t vote to become “The Capitol of Silicon Valley”, just like we didn’t mandate downtown redevelopment, but they both happened just the same. Now we’re left searching for this city’s personality and soul. Where do we find it? In the endless quest to be “big”? To become a city worthy of the size of our population (puh-leeze)?
#18 WW – I hope that wasn’t during the Viet Nam era!
Looks like Rich’s new blog is turning into a pro-Chavez echo chamber.
He argues we should elect Chavez because she is “supported by the most ethical people in our community.” He gives Susan Hammer as an example.
Sorry Rich. Your argument falls apart when we see Susan Hammer supported Ron Gonzales.
See http://www.smartvoter.org/1998jun/ca/scl/vote/gonzales_r/
JMO, if you want an example of the level of apathy around these here parts, check out “The Fly” in this week’s Metro.
JD #49: “Fripperies”? Whew! That one sent me to the dictionary for the first time in years. You make a lot of good points, JD.
MarkT: Thanks for the tip. I have it @ home but rushed out too quickly this a.m.
Thanks, JD, for the thoughtful perspective on SJ and how we should focus on maximizing our distinct positives instead of reinventing ourselves. One quibble: you note that the Great Fall began with Gonzo. It started earlier, with Hammer. Her collossally misguided Full Build-out Airport Plan (which has subsequently been scaled back because it was so blissfully unaware of market realities) signalled the beginning of the Big Business/Big Labor feeding fenzy on taxpayer money. With that tremendously flawed move, Hammer opened up a free buffet for the tax eaters, and City Hall has been serving it up ever since.
53 – The great fall began not with the beginning of the Hammer administration but with the end of the McEnery administration. Redevelopment with the vision and scope that we were attempting takes more than one 8 year term. Hammer adapted redevelopment for her own vision. Gonzo then slaughetered the vision altoghether. If the “vision” is allowed to be altered every 8 years it will never see completion.
And it all comes back to the fact that there was never a mandate for downtown redevelopment. The electorate should have stood up and said “HEY! This is unfinished business, finish it before you move on to other projects.”
Instead, we deemed downtwon a failure and started looking elsewhere.
And now all that redevelopment money has been wasted.
#49
You are one smart person.
#JMO
You keep talking about PAC wanting to save historic buildings at taxpayers’ expense. You must have formed you opinion years ago. Since 2000, the big preservation issues have been, Del Monte Plant #3, Markovitz and Fox, IBM Build 25, the Donner Mansion and the historic commercial district design guidelines. Not in one of these projects did PAC ask the City to spend $1 rebuilding the projects. All they asked the City to do is follow the intent of the law, and do all they could to look at viable alternatives to wasting taxpayers money, destroying historic resources. If the City would have listened to PAC, they would have saved us millions and we would have ended up with a more interesting and vibrant city.
Oy.
Here we go again, with the debate about whether SanJo is a “cowtown” or a “World Class City,” now being centered around what various fripperies have been constructed in its environs.
Let’s start with the terms of debate. Anyone who uses the “cowtown” term without defining the reasons for that appelation regarding SanJo deserves to be buried in horse manure. I live outside of Sacramento, and believe me, San Jose is fookin’ London compared to Sacto.
Next: Anyone who uses the phrase “world class city” also deserves to be buried in said same horse manure until they can outline what exact steps SanJo needs to take to achieve such a lofty status, and whether or not those steps are even necessary, and who (if anybody) should pay for them.
There are cities all over this nation which aspire to “world class” status and wish to get away from the “cowtown” description, and in doing so go merrily along building baubles and arenas and stadia for people who do not live in the city to attend events and then turn around and not stay in the city and thereby not spend money in the city. And in the meantime, essential city services are cut to pay for the baubles and arenas and stadia, and city government languishes in corruption and deceit and disharmony over who was responsible for what. One of the prime examples of this is Memphis, another is pre-Katrina New Orleans.
San Jose is, was, and will forever be, somewhat in the shadow of SFO, never to be fully eclipsed, but likewise never completely in the bright light either. The way SJ is designed and laid out and currently populated makes a true, vibrant cultural downtown highly unlikely absent bazillions of dollars of public support. The recent emphasis on “strong neighborhoods” only emphasizes that approach. Robert Heinlein described SJ as a “thousand villages in search of a city,” and as long as SJ remains as balkanized as it is, that will be the case.
And besides, because of the relative affluence of the Bay Area, those who wish the more “cultural” experience by and large are able to move to SFO on their own accord to participate in it. Conversely, those in SFO who no longer desire the cosmopolitan lifestyle are generally affluent enough to move out to communities where suburban living is more appropriate – like San Jose – but still with easy access to what makes SFO special.
Our goal as citizens (or in my case a former and hopeful future returning citizen) should be to make sure that SJ begins to take back some measure of cohesiveness that it had back in the day. One way to do that is to value and be proud of what exists here and now, and to make sure that what is here and now stays and prospers, and not to worry about what other communities think, feel, do, or say about SJ.
Not to suck up to the author or anything, but during TMcE’s mayoralty, San Jose enjoyed a period where it was very comfortable within its own skin. That continued somewhat under Susan Hammer, but got tossed aside when Gonzo came to town. San Jose needs to get that comfort zone back.
Because until San Jose is comfortable within its own skin, nothing positive will get done on the city’s behalf. And its citizens will be the worse for it.
For most of us, our heritage is not as “the Valley of Heart’s delight”.
If you think about where your grandparents were born, chances are that they weren’t born in Santa Clara County.
Most of us moved here for a good job. Our roots are outside the valley. In many cases, outside the state or outside the country.
Our “heritage” is about being immigrants, being mobile, and being flexible.
I sure hope you’re right, HJ #56
To John michael o’conner and all the other nagsayers, I say sometimes people who you would never suspect rise to the occassion in times of trouble. We haven’t seen it with the majority of council members but a few, Cortese, Reed. Hopelully and I have great hope for Licarrdo in the near future and maybe some others will step forward when Gonzo and Cindy are out ot their way.
RGD and RIP – Please understand, I left SJ in about 1992, commuted in from Walnut Creek for three years, then came up here to the SMF area in 1996 or so. As such, my perspective on the current crisis regarding SJ’s political scene is, at best, superficial.
That said, you can always tell when somebody is selling BS. And when TMcE was doing his redevelopment schtick, he wasn’t selling BS.
The expansion of the RDVA under TMcE seemed logical because he BELIEVED in it. And IMHO, he was right then, and he remains right to this day. While I was at SJS and delivering pizzas downtown, I put up with the farked-up streets and holes in the ground with metal erector sets sticking up in the sky because I believed it was a good thing. And on balance, it has been.
Can anyone here think of San Jose, and what it would be like without the Fairmont Hotel? McEnery Center? DeAnza? The Shark Tank? CDM? Tech?
Subsequent administrations have either decided to embrace diversity for the sake of being diversely diverse (Hammer) or to embrace themselves in an orgy of self-congratulation and self-gratification (resulting in abortions like the GonzoDome).
And in that time, no one who actually believes in the city has been anywhere near the levers of power for about eight years or so. And that’s sad.
It remains to be seen what Cindy (never seen in the same room with Gonzo ever-ever-ever) Chavez or Chuck (don’t call me Rufus) Bell will offer the city, once their mayoralty race is decided, but considering how much crap has been flung about by the respective campaign monkeys, I can’t imagine anyone having any kind of mandate to point SJ back in the right direction.
As a rule in politics, it is difficult to start your administration on a positive note with the collective electorate muttering “Feh.”
RE:#33 Tim H : I know one candidate that knows Dist 6… me .I’d be happy to talk to you call me 810-0578. With the crazy boundry lines between Santa Clara,Campbell and San Jose even Tom M. might make a mistake. lets talk issues
Ok Stevie O,
Welcome to the race. Glad to see you finally got your website up, but you still might want to take a walk outside of WG. Looks like you and the rest of the field is getting smoked by Clark now that Ken has endorsed him. Where do you stand on the ballpark and parks? You might want to consider answering the league of women voters questions.
JD:
Can I imagine what San Jose would be like without Fairmont Hotel? McEnery Center? The Shark Tank? CDM? Tech?
(I didn’t mention the DeAnza because it is a historic hotel and therefore not part of this discussion.)
As for the others…… well, I was born in 1976 and grew up in San Jose so I most definitely not only imagine, but clearly recall San Jose before most of today’s ghastly edifices were raised. And the treatment from the Fairmont’s staff is hostile, no other word for it. Its nosed is turned up at Giannini’s Bank of Italy building and the prices too high for the local citizens. Monolithic Slab of a “hotel”, has no place where it is, won’t miss it once it’s gone…
S.J. was a wonderful place during the early 1980’s before the Redevelopment Agency really went to town. Back then the streets had such an old time feel and look to them; so many buildings and fields are gone and creating sprawl or tall blocks of concrete will never make this place better. Instead, San Jose will lose its own identity in the pursuit of the wrong kind of ‘great.’
Destroying art and architecture is never the right thing to do. How can posterity thank us for that? If a structure is so incredibly ancient that restoring it is not feasible, then why not rebuild it? The city can grow and evolve elsewhere while retaining its pride and history—while swelling in places where previously skewed architectural decicions were made. And believe me those are a dime a dozen in San Jose, thanks to urbanization in high gear circa 1950 and onward.
It’s not too late to keep what we have and put a stop to this trend of demolished beauty and hideous replacements, but people are going to show they care.