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Santa Clara County News & Developments

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#1 ·
Most Santa Clara County residents soon will speak a language other than English at home
By Mike Swift
MEDIANEWS STAFF

Inside a San Jose industrial shop, Mason Lin stands amid the tart smell of natural gas, holding a glass tube over a hissing blue flame. Lin waits until the tube glows orange before twisting it into the serpentine swirls and bows of a Mandarin character.

Within three hours, a colorful neon sign that will blaze the name of a Chinese-owned business into the night emerges between Lin's patient fingers.

The words "Now Hiring" appear over the door of Allen Signs, the sign-making company owned by Mason Lin's brother Allen. When Allen Lin arrived in San Jose from Taiwan in 1981, there was enough work to support one man making Chinese signs, no more. Mason joined him in 1986, and Allen Signs is now a seven-person shop, with Lin looking for a few more workers.

"Ever since 1990, I can see it, it's steady -- irregardless of the economy, our growth is very steady," said Allen Lin, who makes signs in both Chinese and English -- frequently in both -- for everything from yogurt shops and American fast-food franchises to flooring companies. "In 1981, I'm the only one doing that."

As it grows as a global technology hub, Silicon Valley has become one of the most polyglot places in the United States. Santa Clara County is on the brink of a linguistic milestone: Within the next few years, more people will speak a foreign language at home than the number who speak English, recently released census data shows. Given the statistical uncertainty, that threshold may already have been crossed.

Santa Clara County has the largest population of Hindi speakers among all counties in the United States, the second largest population of Vietnamese speakers, the third largest population of Persian/Farsi speakers, and the fifth biggest number of Chinese speakers, a MediaNews analysis of 2005 census data shows.

Since 2000, Santa Clara County has passed Los Angeles and San Francisco to become the California county with the highest percentage of immigrants, with 36 percent of its population born outside of the United States. Miami is the only metropolitan region in the United States with a higher percentage of immigrants than the San Jose area.


There are about a dozen large counties in the United States -- including Los Angeles, Miami-Dade and the New York City boroughs of Queens and the Bronx -- where English-speakers are in the minority. But perhaps only urban Queens has the global shuffle of suburban Santa Clara County, with its multiple South and East Asian languages and sizable Spanish-speaking population.

Joint Venture: Silicon Valley, which has a new 2007 Index report, calls the linguistic mix an economic advantage, allowing collaboration with emerging "spikes" of high-tech innovation and venture capital investment in regions like Bangalore, India; Shanghai, China; and Helsinki, Finland.

"If you think about Miami or L.A., those are places that are characterized in some sense by ethnic tension, and that's not the case in Silicon Valley," said Russell Hancock, president and CEO of Joint Venture: Silicon Valley.

Perhaps, but language was at the heart of two recent community battles in Silicon Valley -- Palo Alto's debate over a Mandarin language immersion program in its public schools, and the city of Santa Clara's dust-up over a proposal to designate a stretch of El Camino Real as a Koreatown, with a Korean-language police officer and requirements that Korean-American merchants post signs in English as well as Korean.

Both ideas met with an emotional backlash from residents. Koreatown opponents, who said the plan could splinter Santa Clara along ethnic lines, gathered more than 1,000 petition signatures under the banner "Santa Clara Unity" to oppose the idea, which the city killed in January.

Santa Clara resident Ron Johnstone said Koreatown was an example of something that erodes the nation's common identity.

When Johnstone's father arrived in New York wearing a hat as an immigrant from England in the 1930s, he looked down from his ship and "he didn't see a single person wearing a hat. He had decided he was going to be an American, so he took the hat and he threw it overboard. That was an example of a man who wanted to become an American," Johnstone said. Proposals such as Koreatown aren't "doing us a bit of good. We don't try to get people to fit in, it would be much better for them if we did."

In San Jose, City Council member Madison Nguyen wants to designate a Vietnamtown but said she doesn't want segregation.

"We're not just focusing on our community, we're integrating into this country," Nguyen said of San Jose's Vietnamese. "I think in a way it's nice to have that sort of (Vietnamtown) designation, but at the same time, it's nice to sort of blend in, blend in with the city and know there is a large group of Vietnamese-Americans, of Filipino-Americans or Indo-Americans here but at the same time integrating into the city."

By some measures of race and ethnicity, Los Angeles, Miami or New York City all have more diversity than Silicon Valley.

"They don't have a sizeable black population. They don't have the Latino population" of Los Angeles or Miami, said Albert Camarillo, a Stanford history professor who studies immigrant and Latino issues. In Los Angeles and parts of New York City, a majority of residents speak languages other than English at home.

What is remarkable about Santa Clara County is the number of languages spoken by a sizeable number of people -- from Asian languages such as Tagalog, Korean and Gujarathi, to European languages such as German, Russian and Portuguese. The San Jose Unified School District teaches English to a student population that speaks about 40 languages at home, from Arabic to Tigrinya, a language spoken by an ethnic group that originates in Eritrea and parts of neighboring Ethiopia in eastern Africa.

Although Asian languages are growing more quickly, Spanish remains the most common foreign language in Santa Clara County, spoken by about 18 percent of the population, up from about 14 percent in 1990. Mandarin and other dialects of Chinese are next, spoken by about 8 percent of the population -- double its share in 1990. Vietnamese and Tagalog come next.

Silicon Valley is also essentially suburban in character, unlike the dense and tribal urban neighborhoods of the Northeast that were the beachheads of an earlier generation of immigrants and remain so in places such as Queens.

Silicon Valley immigrants also are more likely to be bilingual. In Los Angeles, San Francisco and Queens, 40 percent or less of Chinese-speakers speak English "very well," 2005 census numbers show. In Santa Clara County, about 50 percent of Chinese-speakers speak English very well. According to the Joint Venture: Silicon Valley report's analysis of census data, 80 percent of the region's immigrants speak English "well" or "very well."

San Jose has the best-educated suburbs in the United States in terms of people with a four-year college degree, according to an analysis by Brookings Institution demographer Bill Frey, and it is the leading edge of a transformation that increasingly makes it tougher for politicians seeking national office to capture "the suburban vote" with a single strategy.

"Back in the 1950s, the suburbs were distinct in terms of their demographics," Frey said. "You could say you were from the suburbs and people would conjure up that you were white, middle class, had a family and lived in a single-family house. Now it's almost the reverse ... you talk about the suburbs and that's a microcosm of America."

About 55 percent of Silicon Valley's science and engineering talent was born abroad, the Joint Venture report says, with 40 percent of the region's total work force foreign-born.

The Babelian stew of languages is so ingrained to the economic life of Silicon Valley that the view from Hilda Balakhane's storefront is hardly remarkable anymore.

Balakhane and her husband, Albert Sedighpour, own Fantasy Collection, a store in a nondescript strip mall on Union Avenue that sells unique gifts -- Persian CDs, videos, crossword puzzles, books, evil eyes and other charms, and a vast array of pots to cook Persian rice dishes. The store is stacked high with the ceremonial objects crucial to any Persian wedding. People come from as far as Sacramento and Monterey to rent or buy, but also just to hear their own language spoken.

Fantasy Collection "is like the home to a lot of homesicks who come here," Balakhane said in her store one recent afternoon.

Looking out toward Union Avenue, Balakhane has a view of an Indian-owned liquor store, a Palestinian-owned food market, a Vietnamese-owned nail salon, a Mexican taqueria, a Brazilian self-defense school and Ed's Gourmet, a restaurant owned by Korean-born Eddie Ha.

On any afternoon, a visitor to the plaza might hear Arabic, Vietnamese, Hindi, Farsi, Spanish, Hebrew, Mandarin -- and always English. Ha says 90 percent of his customers are white. Even with the growth in non-English-speaking households in Silicon Valley, census data says the number of bilingual Asian and European-language households has grown more since 2000.

Allen Lin says when Chinese merchants ask him to make a sign in Mandarin, he urges them to use English whenever possible.

"I tell them this is still America," Lin said. Often it's not possible to fit both languages on a sign because zoning regulations limit the size, forcing businesses to choose. About 60 percent of Lin's business is Mandarin, but Lin said the split is slowly shifting toward English.

"The higher educated Asian people," he said, "they don't need to rely on the Chinese language to communicate anymore."
 
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#214 ·
The people of San Jose just does not want any kind of stable tax sources around. I voted for the card room expansion, knowing that everyone else is going to vote against it. It's just so frustrating! I'm not even sure how anyone could argue that more tables = more crimes, in an area that is practically non-residential within 3 mile radius.

San Jose does not suck. People from San Jose suck.
 
#215 ·
kudos for having the courage to say it. For all of the innovation San Jose still feels like an office park in a mediocre metro rather than a bustling city. It is boring because the citizenry has deemed it to be boring.
 
#216 ·
More then likely Bay 101 is using Milpitas to pressure San Jose. There are quite a few hurdles to overcome before they would be allowed to relocate to a different city. Not impossible, of course.

Although, Milpitas has been fairly developer-friendly for a while, so I could see this happening if San Jose continues to give the card rooms a hard time. Relocating Bay 101 near the future large Asian mall would be a stroke of genius. That's a lot of synergy right there. If Milpitas could pull that off, that would be a huge amount of tax revenue for years to come.
 
#217 ·
I can't see why the casinos would want to stay in SJ. You will have older, non-working Asians going shopping and hanging at the indoor market stalls Monday through Friday. Just pull the shuttle in front and let them off at the doors of the Casino. Convenient place to leave their savings and social security checks.
 
#218 ·
New renderings, courtesy of sf.curbed.com, of the Santa Clara Centennial Gateway across the street from Levi's Stadium:

Santa Clara Centennial Gateway, will transform a parking lot into a mixed-use commercial and entertainment complex with 430,000 square feet of office space, 120,000 square feet of retail, and a 250-room boutique hotel on a 9.5-acre site.





Source and more info
 
#220 ·
^^

Retail West to assist in the development of Santa Clara’s Centennial Gateway



Santa Clara, CA: San Francisco based commercial real estate firm, Retail West, Inc., has been selected by Lowe Enterprises and Montana Property Group to assist in the development of Santa Clara’s Centennial Gateway. The retail and entertainment destination will be located directly across the street from the new Levi’s Stadium.

Centennial Gateway is slated to included 600,000 square feet of Class-A office space, a vibrant, full service boutique hotel, an open-air plaza, and approximately 120,000 square feet of unique and compelling retail.



Matt Holmes, Principal at Retail West, stated, “This project will be more contemporary, lively, and modern than anything the Bay Area has ever seen. We get to give the most progressive workforce in the world a place to call their own without having to drive to the city for fun.” Rob Kashian, President of Retail West adds, “Part of our goal is to bring in some of the best authentic regional chefs and develop their concepts within this state of the art project”.



Although no specific tenants were mentioned, Holmes says that they are in search of a craft beer brewery or distillery and tasting room, as well as a live music venue. The Centennial Gateway team is developing this project as a daily destination and a civic place of interest in Santa Clara. Not only will it be popular during football games, but year-round as well. The event potential is outstanding given the design’s spacious open-air plaza. An around-the-clock hangout for the deserving digerati? Yes, indeed.

http://news.theregistrysf.com/santa-clara-centennial-gateway/
 
#221 · (Edited)
Not sure I like the tone or aim of their PR. SF is not the competition; Santana Row, Castro, PA, the revamped Cupertino projects and the like are the competition.

There is little local housing (the land is largely in-fill) so you have to target the NSJ crowd plus draw people from other areas. This requires one or more "attention grabbers" or signature aspects.

On game days, there should be plenty of business. So I would disregard marketing to fans. They are going to come regardless so long as you're half-way decent.

To get repeat customers, there should be less glitz and more charm. Avoid metal, aggressive lighting, loud music, etc. Let the crowds be comfortable and linger and they become part of the attraction (PA, Santana Row, Murphy, LG, Castro).

Goes without saying: you already have rail; now provide free parking, which makes a huge psychological difference.
 
#222 ·
On game days free parking would certainly not work, unless they make it 20-30 minute parking, you really don't want people to park there just to go to the stadium. The other days it really depends on demand, I imagine there is enough parking around with the parking garages that it wouldn't be a problem. On non game days the competition clearly is upscale shopping districts like University Av, Santana Row and so on.

As for comparing to SF, it seems to me they are talking about people flying in to see games, they have incentive to have them stay in one of the nearby hotels and go eat and to entertainment nearby, instead of 40 miles away, and have to have them take transit or clog the streets.
 
#224 ·
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/...-starting-next-big-sunnyvale-spec-campus.html

Jay Paul starting next big Sunnyvale spec campus

As if the Jay Paul Co. wasn't busy enough in Sunnyvale, the San Francisco real estate company named for its founder is starting work on the next development chapter in the city: Moffett Gateway.

Crews have started demolishing a trio of old buildings at the entrance to the Moffett Park business district near Highway 237 and Crossman Avenue. Soon to rise on the 15.67 acre site are two, seven-story office buildings totaling 612,000 square feet, plus a 14,000-square-foot amenities center and parking deck. Jay Paul is building the project on spec, meaning that there's no tenant signed yet.

"We are in the process of building that project," Janette D'Elia, senior vice president and chief operating officer with Jay Paul, told me late last month. "We ordered the steel and started the demolition on the first building."

(Don't confuse this Moffett Gateway with Mountain View's Moffett Gateway. That project involves a city-owned parcel that is slated to be redeveloped into a hotel and office complex in a deal with Broadreach Capital Partners.)

...
This is another large office park by 237, not as big as Moffett Towers, but still pretty big.
 
#225 ·
A real shot of good news when you see builders who already have a huge spec project underway start on another one, even when knowing that other builders are building on spec as well. Bodes well for North Sunnyvale, Santa Clara and SJ as tech continues to march down the Peninsula.

And speaking of projects, the Joe Montana project at Levi's Field has its website up.

http://www.montanalowe.com/?gclid=CJvslt-R18ACFZSIfgodThYAPA
 
#226 ·
In some news for Santa Clara, it looks like Oracle is looking to expand the former Sun campus in Santa Clara (I wish they would expand in DTSJ though, just take up the rest of the PWC building)

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/...siders-adding-two-new-buildings-to-santa.html

Oracle considers adding two new buildings to Santa Clara campus

Oracle Corp. is looking to top off its office campus in Santa Clara, floating plans to construct two buildings there totaling about 145,000 square feet.

The new construction would occur on Oracle’s 82-acre campus, which it acquired along with Sun Microsystems in 2010 at 4040 Palm Drive. It would include a 120,000-square-foot office building and a 25,000-square-foot “lab/server” building, according to a city document.

City council members will study the Redwood City-based company’s proposal at their meeting today. Ruth Shikada, economic development director, said the project at this stage is purely a concept and that Oracle has not turned in an application. The council agenda did not contain a staff report. Two public relations representatives from Oracle didn’t respond to my inquiries on Monday.

...
More expansion in Santa Clara, While MV is still building some Sunnyvale and Santa Clara are clearly taking the lead (and Santa Clara got to sue SJ over traffic impacts of north SJ while building a stadium and lots of offices, and Rivermark, I guess they got the last laugh :lol:)
 
#227 ·
In some news for Santa Clara, it looks like Oracle is looking to expand the former Sun campus in Santa Clara (I wish they would expand in DTSJ though, just take up the rest of the PWC building)

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/...siders-adding-two-new-buildings-to-santa.html


More expansion in Santa Clara, While MV is still building some Sunnyvale and Santa Clara are clearly taking the lead (and Santa Clara got to sue SJ over traffic impacts of north SJ while building a stadium and lots of offices, and Rivermark, I guess they got the last laugh :lol:)
Oracle has for more than a decade had complaints that they are losing people because of being too far north, right on the fringe of Silicon Valley. They had kept some scattered offices in South Bay and had thought of putting centers in Cupertino and N. First, but now are focusing on quite a large center at Agnews (which is basically a few yards from North SJ). The building that PWC now has was also owned by Oracle, but people hated working in DT.
 
#228 ·
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/...view-activists-to-rally-for-more-housing.html

Mountain View activists to rally for MORE housing, not less

If you are used to residents turning out in force to oppose development projects, well, consider this: In Mountain View, a community group will rally Tuesday evening to oppose a draft city planning document because they want more housing built in the city, not less.
Citizens plan to chant "No housing? No plan!" before a city council meeting on Tuesday, according to a news release from the Campaign for a Balanced Mountain View, which is organizing the rally.
It's in reaction to the new North Bayshore Precise Plan, which was released last month. The plan for the city district — home to Google Inc., Intuit Corp. and LinkedIn Corp. — would allow plenty of new office development but doesn't include housing because city council members nixed that idea a couple of years ago. The city council will be taking up the issue during a 6:30 p.m. "study session," which means that they will be discussing the topic but will not be taking action.

...
Now that's different than most of the NIMBY stuff we see in the Bay Area.
 
#230 ·
The complaints were that they had to pay for parking, bad traffic and they were remote from food (which is mostly along Santa Clara). PWC gets the same complaints from its employees but they got such a good deal they couldn't pass it up. In any event the bulk of their employees rarely come into the office.

Employers DO listen to their employees about transit. But the preference is for free parking and easy access by car and transit (typically train and shuttle). Cars are preferred in case you have to go home or pick up kids during the day, or have to work late at night.

In any event, none of the downtowns other than SJ want high rise; they are looking for urban walkability and livability, not "downtown" style intensity. Really pleasant urban areas are NOT high rise, they are 3-7 stories typically with housing over retail, parks, plazas, nightlife streets intermingled, etc.
 
#235 ·
I'm surprised they had to pay for parking, Oracle owns the building, so they can dictate whatever they want with regards to parking, they didn't charge for parking at their HQ several years ago, maybe they do now, so I would've thought they would make the parking there free. I'm not sure, but I'm guessing Adobe doesn't charge for parking at their office. The PWC building has an attached 5 story garage, so I would imagine they have plenty of parking, if they charge for it I guess is because they don't want that many people to use it, or they have ulterior motives.
 
#231 ·
Related bets big on California with $6.5B development

California, here we come.

New York-based Related Companies — one of the biggest developers in both the city and the country — is planning a $6.5 billion project in Santa Clara, Calif. Related’s proposal — 8 million square feet of offices, retail space, hotels and apartments — will have to go through an environmental review, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Related is also planning to construct two skyscrapers in San Francisco. Ground will not be broken on those towers until 2016, according to the Wall Street Journal. In Los Angeles, the real estate company is looking to build a $2 billion mixed-use project.

The projects on the West Coast underscore Related’s intention to boost its profile outside of the New York market and tap into California’s growing demand for large scale investments.

[...]
- See more at: http://therealdeal.com/blog/2014/09...a-with-6-5b-development/#sthash.fipHhdQB.dpuf
 
#232 ·
This of course is the "big brother" of the Joe Montana development next to Levi's Stadium. Mostly office, hotel, retail with very little housing due to the land being in-fill. Build-out over more than a decade.

Btw, the LA project is a Frank Gehry designed mixed-use high rise on Grand Ave. downtown. Quite a place per the latest renderings.
 
#238 ·
Oh, and regarding the Sun campus expansion. At first I thought maybe Oracle wants to move its Downtown teams out of the building and try to sell it off. But my buddy at the Downtown site said that the Sun expansion has already been spoken for, and it's not for the folks currently in Downtown.
 
#243 ·
The remoteness I was talking about was from the main food areas of Santa Clara St.

Someone else brought up remoteness from housing, but I can see why. People I know who live in SF are willing to go to PA or so but not much beyond. It's not that they won't do it; they just rather not.

But, as housing and companies spread south, downtown should become somewhat more central.
 
#244 ·
Yes, that PWC building is very remote from the main food joints of Downtown. Hopefully SoFA market would help with that.

And about the Oracle folks, the ones who are based in that building gets free parking, no doubt. And there are more than a "few", my buddy estimates around 300 or 400 employees there. And according to him, more are coming.

Most employees there would rather be at the Agnews campus. According to him, no one likes queuing up at the elevators. This is probably a "tech" thing, as even I have never liked the elevator queue.
 
#246 ·
The large Monticello Village development by Irvine in Santa Clara has been making some good progress. This project is very visible at the intersection of Lawrence Expressway and Monroe.

825 units
40,000 square feet of retail (20,000 for an anchor, maybe grocery?)
2-level parking garage

Some renders from the developer's website:









 
#249 ·
LinkedIn for some reason decided they would not move to Sunnyvale, they are trying to expand in Mountain View.

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/...sive-expansion-plan-in-mountain.html?page=all

and apparently they are getting the Box HQ building for when Box moves to the peninsula (dowtown Redwood City).

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/10/31/linkedin-leases-box-hq-in-los-altos.html

Having actually worked in North Shoreline, I really think this is a bad idea, I doubt MV will widen any part of Shoreline to get more traffic through in rush hour, so expect traffic on the Shoreline exit to start backing up into both 101 and 85 in the next few years as Google crams more people into their low slung offices and LinkedIn expands, well someone is laying off people in the area at least, looking at you MS. :eek:hno:
 
#250 ·
I wouldn't feel too bad for Sunnyvale. A couple of weeks ago it was announced that Google had pre-leased all 1.9 million(!) square feet of Moffett Place, which is still under construction. The Business Journal calls it "A contender for the largest office lease ever signed in Silicon Valley and perhaps the state of California."

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/10/23/google-seals-massive-sunnyvale-redwood-city-deals.html?page=all

Here's a snazzy video from Jay Paul's website. I found it interesting that they play up the Caltrain angle, even though the closest station is pretty far away from this new campus. I suppose they are really going after the SF commuter.

91566898
 
#252 ·
Funny thing is I heard that Moffett Towers was built in hopes that Google would take the roughly 1.8M sqft in office space whole. They waited for a few years hoping to lease the campus whole, then buildings whole before starting floor by floor leases, now they lease out the entire campus before being built. I can see why some people keep going on about a tech bubble, granted I haven't seen anyone really make the claim that Google or Apple are growing beyond their fundamentals. But I do imagine this will even out at some point, once everyone in the world has a smartphone how many more will be sold?
 
#255 ·
So Irvine is really killing it in Santa Clara at the moment. The first phase of their new campus at Bowers and 101 was just recently topped off, and Ericsson will be moving 2,000 employees in late next year.

In addition, Irvine just landed their first retail tenant at the same location, a "super" Whole Foods, which is taking 50,000 square feet. There is an additional 75,000 square feet of retail space that has yet to be leased.

Irvine has a website for the development up, but there's not much information on it besides a construction cam.
http://santaclarasquare.com/


Irvine tops out Santa Clara Square office campus:
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/10/29/irvine-tops-out-santa-clara-square-office-campus.html?page=all

Whole Foods coming to Irvine Company's Santa Clara retail center:
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/11/04/whole-foods-coming-to-irvine-companys-santa-clara.html?page=all
 
#257 ·
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/...hor-stores-at-cupertinos-vallco.html?page=all

Progress on a proposal from Peter Pau for 2M sq. ft. of office, 600k of retail, 700 units of housing and a hotel where the moribund VALLCO Shopping Center now stands. Given the demand for housing and office (zero vacancy rate), it sounds like a winner.

Directly across the freeway from Apple’s spaceship and catty-corner to Pau’s Main St. Cupertino project, currently well under way.
 
#258 ·
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/...finally-under-single-ownership-paus-sand.html

Update already! Pau buys the Vallco Mall main building and now owns the entire property. Next is working with the city and locals to design something that meets as many needs as possible (good luck, Peter).

First proposal is office where Penny's is (explains the Hyatt Hotel already being build behind Penny's); mid to upscale retail facing Stevens Creek; open areas and housing blending in around the existing housing abutting the property; easy walking connections to adjacent properties.

There's also a link to a lengthy article about Pau's background.
 
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