Santa Clara County News & Developments

[arturo]

Originally Posted by Iggui

¡in this country we speak inglés!

¡learn it!

hahaha! i'm actually a fan of emotive punctuation the way it's done in romance languages, it tells the reader how to read it before getting to the end of the sentence.

[metropolismayor]

Originally Posted by cajun504

I would rather have Asians then Mexicans.

Curious that under "interests" in your profile, you list "church."

Do us a favor, stay in New Orleans. Thanks.

[gladisimo]

Originally Posted by krudmonk

People in Hong Kong aspire to attend a community college in Cupertino???

OK maybe not exactly, they see it as a way to avoid the HKCEE, a stepping stone to the UCs, or in case of some people who took the HKCEE and didn't get results they wanted, it is their back up plan.

Poorer students might go to Australia instead, and some go to the UK

[Nacho87]

Originally Posted by cajun504

I would rather have Asians then Mexicans.

You must enjoy playing computer games 24/7!!

[AZian]

Here in Arizona, Maricopa County's Asian Population has increased by 25% from 2000 until 2007. That is a 25,000 numerical increase!! My boss's church (Korean) has tripled in size since 2004, and has opened another branch! The majority seem to be people fed-up with California's sky-high living costs. Mostly Vietnamese and Chinese (mainland, Mandarin speaking) it seems, although the Korean community is growing fast too.

[robertee]

The following projects have all been approved by the City of Milpitas:

The Californian



Landmark Tower



Milpitas Square (Redevelopment, Next to Landmark Tower)













The District at Milpitas







Centria West (Phase II of Centria Development)

[Ichiban]

Wow all of that got approved during this recession? That's pretty amazing! My job is very close to Milpitas so I look forward to watching all of this stuff rise.

I'm curious about the redevelopment of Milpitas Square. There doesn't seem to be any room for it to expand.

[chrisrich]

Originally Posted by Ichiban

Wow all of that got approved during this recession? That's pretty amazing! My job is very close to Milpitas so I look forward to watching all of this stuff rise.

I'm curious about the redevelopment of Milpitas Square. There doesn't seem to be any room for it to expand.

Maybe we are past the recession now, or perhaps the development is only being done by the banks using taxpayer funded TARP money? At least some people are doing well financially.


__________________
san francisco tours

[JoshuaSantos]

It looks like they are moving most of the parking to structures to make room for more buildings.

Originally Posted by Ichiban

Wow all of that got approved during this recession? That's pretty amazing! My job is very close to Milpitas so I look forward to watching all of this stuff rise.

I'm curious about the redevelopment of Milpitas Square. There doesn't seem to be any room for it to expand.

[durf 2]

Ben, Bay 101 is building a hotel and casino which is about 9 story tall by the airport/uptown area. They should have built it downtown and get rid of all those surface parking lots like in cities around the world.

[Animo]

By Peter Delevett
Mercury News Columnist
Posted: 05/18/2011 03:38:26 PM PDT
Updated: 05/19/2011 05:34:06 AM PDT


LinkedIn has finally settled on a price at which it plans to debut its shares: For a mere $45 apiece, you too can (try to) get in on Silicon Valley's most anticipated IPO in years.

So with the company valued at a theoretical $4.2 billion, who's shaping up as the big winners? Try looking along Sand Hill Road.

Three of the venture capital firms that have invested in the professional networking site -- Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Ventures and Greylock Partners, where LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman now works -- will own a collective 38 percent of the company after Thursday, when it's expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol LNKD. And they've all made out very nicely on their investments.

Interestingly, those three venture firms aren't unloading any shares in the offering.

Nobody at the trio would talk this week, citing the Securities and Exchange Commission's quiet period. But Bill Gurley, a partner at another top Sand Hill Road firm, said it's fairly common for VC funds to hold on to the shares of their portfolio companies.

Because stock prices tend to go up over time (sorry, Pets.com), "The best returns in venture are from companies held way past the initial IPO," said Gurley, of Benchmark Capital. Social-networking startups in his firm's portfolio include microblogging site Twitter, review hub Yelp and question-and-answer clearinghouse.

"If you have a company with a sound competitive advantage -- and LinkedIn certainly qualifies -- you would definitely hold the stock and not participate in the actual IPO," Gurley added.

Launched in 2003, LinkedIn's muscular online Rolodex now tops 100 million users who can add colleagues and contacts to their networks, then troll their contacts' networks for introductions. Though the basic service is free, the company makes money in a variety of ways, including premium subscriptions, advertising and job postings.

Last year, the Mountain View outfit bagged revenue of $243 million; revenue totaled $94 million in the first three months of this year, more than double the same period last year. Hence Gurley's point about competitive advantage.
To be sure, other LinkedIn backers are looking for liquidity: Goldman Sachs, for instance, is selling its entire allotment of 871,000 shares, and another early VC backer, Bain Capital, is selling 15 percent of its 4.3 million shares. Still another VC who's poised to reap a windfall is Joe Kraus, the Excite co-founder who's now at Google (GOOG) Ventures and was an early angel investor in LinkedIn.

Kraus, according to SEC documents, is selling 15,000 shares Thursday but is hanging on to more than 62,000. That's the same game plan being deployed by LinkedIn founder Hoffman, who with his wife, Michelle, is selling 115,000 shares but will retain nearly 19 million -- about 20 percent of the company -- after the offering.

Although Hoffman works at Greylock, LinkedIn says he won't have any sway over the firm's shares: Partner David Sze represents the firm on the company's board. Greylock, by the way, is coming out pretty well on the deal, according to data compiled by Thomson Reuters: It's put just $6 million into LinkedIn over the years, but its stake is worth $632 million at the IPO price.
By contrast, Bessemer -- which didn't invest in LinkedIn until after Greylock and Sequoia -- has invested more than $29 million, but its post-IPO stake is worth "just" $206 million on paper.

As for Sequoia, the company's earliest venture backer, its $27.3 million investment is suddenly valued at $757 million. I'll bet getting dissed in "The Social Network" suddenly doesn't sting as much. (Sequoia was famously turned down by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, who showed up to the pitch meeting in a bathrobe.)

Still, even if the stock enjoys a hefty first-day run-up, Hoffman and the three venture firms are taking a risk: SEC rules bar them from selling any shares for six months after the IPO. One prominent social-networking firm that went public this month on the NYSE, China's Renren, saw its shares plunge back to earth just days after its IPO, though they regained a bit of momentum Wednesday.

On the other hand, it looks increasingly likely that LinkedIn is going to clear the way for other social heavyweights such as Groupon, Zynga and Facebook to go public in the next year or so. So if there's no letdown in the investor fervor for those stocks, Hoffman and Co. just might end up looking like geniuses.

Clearly, management isn't lacking for confidence: after hiking its estimated share price range Tuesday, they priced the stock at the very top of the new range. For those keeping score, that means the $352 million IPO would be the valley's biggest since VMware raised nearly $1 billion in 2007 -- and the biggest Internet IPO since Google's in 2004.

[Animo]

Santa Clara County is a county located at the southern end of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. As of 2010 it had a population of 1,781,642. The county seat is San Jose. The highly urbanized Santa Clara Valley within Santa Clara County is also known as Silicon Valley. Santa Clara is the most populous county in the Bay Area region.

Cities, towns, and neighborhoods

There are 15 incorporated cities and towns in the county:

San Jose, which includes the former cities/communities of:

Alum Rock,
Cambrian Park,
Willow Glen,
East San Jose, and
Alviso
Campbell
Cupertino
Gilroy
Los Altos
Los Altos Hills
Los Gatos
Milpitas
Monte Sereno
Morgan Hill
Mountain View
Palo Alto
Santa Clara
Saratoga
Sunnyvale

[Animo]

by Philip Ferrato


It's only been four years, but in planning years, the merest blip in time, as Stanford University tries to expand its hospital into a complex encompassing the medical school, Stanford Hospital and the Lucille Packard Children's Hospital. They've already expanded on the 1960's-vintage facility by Edward Durell Stone, which will demolished at some point in the future for failure to meet current seismic standards. The new complex, designed by Rafael Viñoly, is expected to break ground this year, and this week Stanford seems to have hammered out a deal with Palo Alto to get the project going- a deal which will probably include a fund for future preservation projects.

Stone started his project at Stanford 1959 and went on to design a public library in Palo Alto as well as the city hall, a forerunner of New York's iconic GM Building- now better known for its mid-plaza Apple Store. Stone's work is not very popular these days, despite the resurgent interest in Mid-Century Modern, and his Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. is subject to regular, ongoing derision; his museum for Huntington Hartford in New York underwent a controversial renovation. Stanford remains a virtual survey of 20th Century American architecture and is well worth a visit if that's how you roll, and Stone's low-slung hospital is an interesting artifact.

[Animo]

By Diana Samuels

The finish line is quickly approaching for the approval of Stanford University's $3.5 billion hospital expansion project.

The project, which would add 1.3 million square feet to Stanford and Lucile Packard Children's Hospitals and the School of Medicine, took another key step Wednesday. Palo Alto's Planning and Transportation Commission voted 6-0, with Chairman Samir Tuma recusing himself, to recommend a zoning change, a development agreement and other amendments and permits that will allow the project to move forward.

The final hurdle will come June 6, when the city council is scheduled to review and potentially approve the expansion.

"On a whole, I think we probably have the best project that we could have at this point in time," Commissioner Arthur Keller said.

Stanford says it needs to modernize and expand its hospitals to fulfill state seismic requirements and meet patient demand.

Though commissioners had some quibbles Wednesday, the project appeared to be too far along for many changes. It has undergone review for almost four years and has been the subject of nearly 100 meetings in Palo Alto and neighboring cities.

Commissioner Susan Fineberg asked Wednesday to require that Stanford establish a "historic preservation fund" as part of the development agreement.
The fund could pay for various historic renovation projects in the city in an effort to offset the loss of the 1959 Edward Durell Stone building, which will be demolished as part of the hospital expansion.

Other commissioners said it was too late to add the request to the development agreement, which was intensely negotiated over the past two years.

"We're getting into the middle of the negotiations," Commissioner Eduardo Martinez said. "I agree with the sentiment and the idea, but I think it should have come up a long time ago."

Stanford has agreed to a slew of conditions in the development agreement, ranging from giving Palo Alto $23 million for city infrastructure, to paying nearly $91 million for Caltrain passes for hospital employees for 51 years. Advance Planning Manager Steven Turner said the package totals close to $175 million.

Commissioners voted Wednesday to recommend the creation of a new zoning district specifically for the hospital. The new "Hospital District" would allow buildings of up to 130 feet in height on the main Stanford University Medical Site, and maximum heights of 60 feet for new structures on the Hoover Pavilion at the corner of Palo and Quarry Roads. Stanford plans to remodel the 84,000-square-foot Hoover Pavilion building and continue using it as clinic space, while adding an additional 60,000-square-foot medical office building northwest of the site.

Stanford officials showed commissioners at Wednesday's meeting a "fly-through" video of the project, noting architectural details and providing an idea of how people will move through the property.

Commission Vice Chair Lee Lippert said he was worried the proposed 1.1 million-square-foot hospital building might be difficult for visitors to navigate.
Though he called the approval process an "incredible journey," he was not "bowled over by what I see here today."

"I am going to say that it's satisfactory and I will move to support what is presented here," Lippert said.

Email Diana Samuels at dsamuels@dailynewsgroup.com.

[Animo]

Stanford Medical Center has always been known for educating some of the brightest minds in medicine, but their facility is rapidly becoming out of date. To stay ahead of technology and the times, a new $2 billion hospital, designed by Rafael Viñoly Architects is in the works. Preliminary construction is expected to start in 2011 and progress in stages for about 6 years. A plan based on modular sections will allow the building to adapt to a variety of uses and allow for incremental expansion over the years. Daylighting is a one of the key design elements to encourage healing and the project is expected to target LEED certification.

Read more: Rafael Viñoly's Plans For The New Stanford Hospital Reveal Modular and Daylight Filled Cubes | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World

[JoshuaSantos]

I think Berryessa was once its own city as well.

Originally Posted by Animo

Santa Clara County is a county located at the southern end of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. As of 2010 it had a population of 1,781,642. The county seat is San Jose. The highly urbanized Santa Clara Valley within Santa Clara County is also known as Silicon Valley. Santa Clara is the most populous county in the Bay Area region.

Cities, towns, and neighborhoods

There are 15 incorporated cities and towns in the county:

San Jose, which includes the former cities/communities of:

Alum Rock,
Cambrian Park,
Willow Glen,
East San Jose, and
Alviso
Campbell
Cupertino
Gilroy
Los Altos
Los Altos Hills
Los Gatos
Milpitas
Monte Sereno
Morgan Hill
Mountain View
Palo Alto
Santa Clara
Saratoga
Sunnyvale

[vadin]

Apple is trying to build a new campus in Cupertino. It will be large enough to hold 12,000 employees.

I love the building design and landscape. The main building looks like spaceship with a huge courtyard in the middle, and an apricot orchard. Much different than any campus I've seen. It will be interesting to see once it is done. Check it out.

[JoshuaSantos]

Originally Posted by vadin

Apple is trying to build a new campus in Cupertino. It will be large enough to hold 12,000 employees.

I love the building design and landscape. The main building looks like spaceship with a huge courtyard in the middle, and an apricot orchard. Much different than any campus I've seen. It will be interesting to see once it is done. Check it out.

Anyone want to take a stab at the price tag? I'm going to say $2.5 billion.

[vadin]

Originally Posted by JoshuaSantos

Anyone want to take a stab at the price tag? I'm going to say $2.5 billion.

The average cost of building a multistory office building in the Bay Area is about $210/sq. foot. This campus is designed to have 3.1 million square feet, so if it were to be built at the average cost, it would cost over $600 million.

My guess would be that when all is said and done, with all of the bells and whistles in this plan, the final cost will be around $1.5 billion.

[SJSharks DowntownGuy]

I wish we could get a mega campus downtown, though space is more limited. I wrote a blog post on it...
http://thinkbiggersanjose.blog.com/2...tion-downtown/