Perhaps one of the greatest takeaways from the past two years was an experiential one created in early parts of the pandemic. For a period of time, when everything was locked down and only a few ventured out periodically for essential trips, you could drive down most roads and only see a small handful of cars. What might have once been a 45 minute drive, composed mostly of stop and go traffic, became a 10-15 minute drive. Sure, you might have to wait in line for 30 minutes before they let you in to resupply and hope they had some of the essentials that you were looking for, but finally, the madness that makes up the roadways around the Bay Area had quieted. Now, as the traffic continues to build back to it's pre-pandemic levels, it's a reminder of one of negatives to the quality of life in the Bay Area.
A year before the pandemic, I wrote about how high density housing was destroying Silicon Valley. With the pandemic, remote work, and the stories about people moving away from the Bay Area, you might imagine that the over-subscription of space in our neighborhood might have eased, but it's simply not the case. Instead, the governments and the regional developers seem hell bent on building gridlock on a massive scale.
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| A top view of the planned development at El Paseo De Saratoga |
Take, for example, this development that was moved forward by San Jose at the El Paseo De Saratoga location in west San Jose. If you've been a resident of the south bay for any length of time, you probably know it as the shopping center with the REI, or where the REI moved to when it left Cupertino. El Paseo De Saratoga was once a pretty standard regional strip mall. They had some restaurants, some stores, a grocery store, a bank or two, and a movie theater. Sadly, many of the businesses at El Paseo suffered under larger market trends. There was a Staples, a Mimi's Cafe, a Le Boulanger, a Lucky's grocery store. You might wonder if El Paseo had issues, but across the street at Westgate Mall, there was a Walmart grocery that was closed as well.
With the closing of the Lucky grocery store (and this broader statewide move to add huge amounts of high density housing), they decided to do a redesign and transform El Paseo into a high density mixed use development.
As someone who lives in this area, when you first learn about a plan to add housing to strip mall, you assume that it's going to be something like the little project over on San Tomas Aquino — maybe 20 to 30 houses on a chunk of land that used to be a tire store and a couple of auto shops. What you don't expect is that the city of San Jose will approve somebody to develop 11 and 12 story towers on the properties that once housed a single story strip mall.
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| A rendering of what the proposed 11-story buildings will look like |
What's better than a strip mall with a Lucky grocery store? How about if we make it a Whole Foods grocery store, but we add 6 floors of housing on top? And while we're at it, let's cut the amount of available parking to 1/3 of what was there. Not only will the Whole Foods seem busy with all of the people right on top of it, but the people driving around looking for parking will make it seem like it's in even greater demand.
Brilliant.
So here's the thing about this high-density development racket. They claim that they're building these at key points on the various transportation corridors. That way, when they add 1000 new residential locations, they can say "see, it's right next to a Caltrain station, so many of those people will be able to simply take Caltrain to the places that they need to go," as though the majority of the new residents won't own a car or ever find a need to drive.
They can't even make that claim for El Paseo. El Paseo de Saratoga is 3 miles away from the nearest light rail station. It's 8 miles to the nearest Caltrain station. Tucked away in this western corner of San Jose, it's nowhere near the Bart expansion. There also aren't a whole lot of bus stops, nor bus lines that run through the intersections around Saratoga Ave, Prospect and Quito/Lawrence Expressway. In terms of driving, El Paseo is 1.5 miles away from Highway 85 and 2.5 miles from 280. It's not near mass transit, nor does it represent housing next to easy transportation access. What's worse, there are no plans to expand mass transportation in the area or to expand any of the surrounding roadways.
And it gets better. They're also planning to add a Costco on Prospect between Saratoga and Lawrence Expressway.
F'd up traffic? Somebody else's problem.
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Housing Rich, Jobs Poor
When I'm talking about traffic in Silicon Valley, one of the things that I try to explain to people who are new to the area is about the broader traffic flows. In the mornings, most of the traffic in the Bay Area flows from the places where there are houses to the places where there are jobs. Then, in the evenings, the traffic flows from the places where there are jobs to the places where there are homes.
This is why there are huge traffic backups going north from Gilroy, Morgan Hill and South San Jose in the mornings. And it's also why there is tons of traffic going toward Mountain View on 85 in the morning. Lots of jobs in those directions, but, historically, not as much housing (or more expensive housing).
In theory, one of the goals of some of these high-density housing developments has been to provide more housing nearer to the jobs. As much as I hate the traffic and the density created by places like the Santa Clara Square development, it actually expands housing in an area where there are a lot of businesses.
In contrast, the non-residential density around the planned El Paseo development is low (15,420 sf/acre) — ~3x lower than the planned Valco development (47,980 sf/acre), ~2x lower than the Stevens Creek Promenade. Meanwhile, the residential density of the El Paseo plan is extremely high (92 units/acre) compared to some of the other area developments. e.g. Cambrian Park (39 units/acre) and Valco (48 units/acre).
But forget about the specific numbers. Instead, think about what's around these actual projects. The Valco project is just about next door to the Apple headquarters and it's surrounded by Apple buildings. As for the Steven's Creek development, there's a lot of retail, but they've been also adding office buildings around Santana Row and there are some corporate employers like Splunk there. It gets worse when you get down to Cambrian Park. The only substantial corporate employer near there is Xilinx.
Meanwhile, if you hop over to the planned El Paseo development, it appears that San Jose is pinning their hopes on adding a handful of retail jobs. There aren't any large corporate employers in the area. They're not adding a corporate campus. And there won't be any added jobs or corporate businesses, particularly once the roads are inundated with all of the new residential traffic.
In other words, what you'll have is a (and this is a technical measure) shit-ton of new residences, with an equally high number of vehicles, the majority of which will be getting onto the roads to drive somewhere else to work at their jobs.
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This Isn't About Improving San Jose for Residents
I can almost guarantee you that, if you asked any Bay Area resident — or at least one that has been here for a reasonable amount of time — would more traffic improve your quality of life? The near universal answer would be no. And yet, San Jose and the state of California seem hell-bent on stuffing more and more high-density mixed use developments into every corner of the Bay Area.
They say the want to expand the availability of housing and claim the answer is adding 11 stories of apartments in the spot with underused one and two-story strip malls are located. At the same time, if they went three blocks in closer to downtown San Jose — down Hamilton or down Saratoga — there are aging two and three story apartments that could probably benefit from a face-lift. But again, it's not about making things better, it's about trying to turn under-used retail and parking into cash. They don't want to upgrade things, they want to take the easy money and run.
Don't get me wrong. I understand that there would be a lot of challenges with updating and transforming existing multi-resident properties, starting with the fact that there are already existing property owners and existing residents. But these people are residents. They are constituents. And yet, none of these high-density multi-use developments are really about improving the quality of life for the existing area residents.
What Can You Do To Help Stop This Overstuffed El Paseo de Saratoga High-Density Development?
If you're a resident of San Jose, you should be aware that the San Jose City Council has a hearing and a vote scheduled for Tuesday, June 21. This is your opportunity to speak out and voice your opposition to the existing plan.
You could also reach out to the Mayor and the 10 City Council members and voice your opposition to the plan. For more comprehensive information on the entire project, check out this link from the Moreland West Neighborhood Association, Joint Neighborhoods Letter to City Council on El Paseo Project — Share! Write!!.
