Cambrian Park Plaza To Be Annexed Into San Jose

By Joseph Geha, San Jose Spotlight

September 9, 2022

Major redevelopment plans for the iconic Cambrian Park Plaza are moving closer to final approval.

The San Jose City Council is expected to vote Tuesday to annex a nearly 20-acre parcel of Santa Clara County land that encompasses the plaza into the city. The procedural step will advance long-brewing plans to transform the sprawling 1950s-era shopping center, endemic to suburban car culture, into a walkable hub of housing, retail, hotel rooms and park space known as Cambrian Village.

“This is an underutilized piece of property that sorely needs revamping,” District 9 Councilmember Pam Foley, who represents the area, told San José Spotlight.

Cambrian Village fits into San Jose’s efforts to revitalize certain swaths of the city with “urban villages,” mixed-use developments that include both housing and commercial spaces. The project will help set the “personality, feel and density” of the area and serve as an anchor for future development, Cheryl Wessling, a spokesperson for the city’s planning department, told San José Spotlight.

In a unanimous vote last month, the city council approved both the environmental impact report for the project and the pre-zoning of the land in anticipation of the development.

If the council approves the property annexation, a Santa Clara County commission will need to certify the change before the development can be considered for final approval at a Planning Director’s hearing, Laura Meiners, a supervising planner with the city, told San José Spotlight.

The director’s hearing could take place as soon as October or November, she said.

The project, proposed by Kimco Realty, calls for demolishing the entire commercial center—about 170,000 square feet—to make way for 305 apartments, a 229-room hotel, a 110-bed assisted living facility for seniors, as well as 50 senior independent living residences. The well-known carousel sign that marks the plaza will be retained and placed along Union Avenue.

The apartment building will be mixed-use. It will include roughly 51,000 square feet of retail or restaurant space on the ground floor. The hotel building also will have about 4,600 square feet of commercial space. Most of the parking will be underground.

The project will also include 48 single-family homes that will have 27 accessory dwelling units, or granny units, as well as 25 townhomes, according to city reports.

The developer will reserve 50 apartments as below market-rate, to be rented at rates affordable to people earning up to the area median income, which for a couple in Santa Clara County is about $134,000 annually.

Four acres will be set aside as public open space, and Foley and other councilmembers asked the developer to ensure events that take place at the plaza currently, like farmers markets and short-term Christmas tree farms, are able to continue to use those spaces after the project is complete.

The developer will also be required to offer relocation assistance to any businesses leasing at the shopping center that have been there since 2015 or earlier and offer them a space when the new development is complete.

Foley said the project will be a big benefit for the area, though she acknowledged some drawbacks. Not all businesses may survive the redevelopment, and the project has been criticized by some for being too dense for the area, which is dominated by single-family homes.

“Change is really difficult, but I really look forward to having this Cambrian Village developed and opened so that our families can really have a place in our area that is a place they can walk to and meet friends,” she said. “They don’t have to get in their cars and drive down to the Pruneyard, or to Los Gatos or Willow Glen.”

The San Jose City Council meets Tuesday at 1:30 p.m. Learn how to watch and participate.

This story will be updated.

Contact Joseph Geha at joseph@sanjosespotlight.com or @josephgeha16 on Twitter.

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