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San Jose Economy Thread: Jobs, Business, Finance

138K views 721 replies 27 participants last post by  dirt patch 
#1 ·
It makes a bit more sense to me that the threads on the economy are separated by city/metro as well, just like the development thread. Wanted to kick this off; hope it can be stickied!
 
#179 ·
Downtown San Jose ultralounge: Vanity SJ proposal revived

SAN JOSE -- Planning commissioners Wednesday could deny an "ultralounge" at the old Bella Mia restaurant building that was first proposed more than a year ago.

And that has the proprietor crying foul, arguing planners at the very same meeting are set to allow a similar project just 150 feet away and accusing a politically connected law firm next door of tanking their proposal.

"I think this project has been treated very unfairly," said George Mull, an attorney representing "1st Street SJ Enterprise" and shareholder Jenny Wolfes, who proposed the Vanity SJ ultralounge inside the old Bella Mia on South 1st Street. "It's clear to everyone that there is inappropriate political pressure being put on San Jose's staff."

While city officials deny succumbing to political pressure, it's clear Wolfes was given a slew of mixed signals. Planning staff recommended approving two previous versions of the Vanity SJ project with a larger occupancy. Now they recommend denial.

The Planning Commission also recommended approving the Vanity SJ lounge in May 2015 and then flipped its position five months later after the City Council overruled the decision, even though Wolfes reduced occupancy by 120 people in response to concerns about it turning into a "megaclub."

While the ultralounge meets the site's zoning requirements and is consistent with the city's general plan, Assistant Planning Director Rosalynn Hughey says it doesn't meet the "intent" of a council policy that says no more than 30 percent of businesses on one side of a street can have nighttime uses to avoid leaving the block dark during the day.

Wolfes added a restaurant to serve lunch to add daytime use and said she'd separate the two floors, closing the top level at midnight and using it as a banquet for private events. No more than 500 people could occupy both floors, down from 669 total in her original proposal.

But adding a restaurant to serve lunch doesn't solve the problem, Hughey said, because there's no guarantee Wolfes will keep it open.

Three rounds of changes also didn't appease Mayor Sam Liccardo and downtown Councilman Raul Peralez, whose concerns echo those of attorneys from Hopkins & Carley, the project's neighbor. The attorneys said noise, litter and odors will destroy their downtown business. Hopkins & Carley employs former Mayor Chuck Reed, though he hasn't commented on the project.

"This will result in unsafe situations for our attorneys, staff, clients, and people with whom we do business," shareholder Jeffrey Essner wrote in a letter last year.

But the law office is surrounded by other venues that play music and serve alcohol -- Paper Plane, Gravity House, 55 South and Temple -- and one nearby restaurant is asking for a permit to serve alcohol until 2 a.m. and allow live entertainment.


That application is from M Asian Fusion Restaurant, and city planning staff recommended the Planning Commission approve it Wednesday.

...
http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area...town-san-jose-ultralounge-proposal-back-again
 
#190 ·
Good to see the range of offerings expanding and the direct competition is interesting. But I'm not sure 6:30 AM gets my business at any price. :lol:

I did have a staff guy who used to go to DC for hearings and would take the red-eye there, go to the hearings, then catch an evening flight home. But I never got into that.
 
#196 ·
http://www.mercurynews.com/sal-pizarro/ci_30308200/nextspace-expanding-into-sjsv-chamber-commerce-building

NextSpace expanding into Chamber of Commerce building

The San Jose/Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce will be getting a lot of new tenants soon. Part of its downtown San Jose building will become the second San Jose location for NextSpace, the co-working outfit that rents out space to small businesses and entrepreneurs.

With WeWork moving into several floors of 75 E. Santa Clara St. and NextSpace's original home on Second and San Fernando filled, it seems the city's dream of creating a downtown "co-working corridor" is becoming a reality.

Chamber CEO Matt Mahood says a partnership with NextSpace is a natural opportunity for the business-oriented group to support the innovation economy in Silicon Valley and especially in downtown San Jose.

NextSpace Silicon Valley at the SJSV Chamber will take up a 7,000 square-foot space in the chamber's building on the corner of Market and Santa Clara Streets. The new space will be taking applications on Oct. 1, but some NextSpace founding members have already begun to fill the space, which will include small offices, a kitchen, conference rooms and an event space.
 
#199 ·
So many breweries, not sure what's new and what's repeat now!

Ref: CP16-046 Project Location: 718 SOUTH 1ST ST Conditional Use Permit to allow a new brewery and tasting room in an existing 4,187-square foot building on 0.126 gross acre site in the CP Commercial Pedestrian Zoning District.
Sounds like Billy Berk's wants a piece of the late night crowd downtown

Ref: CP16-047 Project Location: 99 SOUTH 1ST ST Conditional Use Permit to allow after midnight uses at an existing restaurant (Billy Berk's) on a 0.22 gross acre site
 
#201 ·
#202 ·
San Jose Manufacturing Comeback Linked to Equitable Growth

But if there’s a silver lining for job seekers in the city from marginalized backgrounds, it’s the city’s reemerging manufacturing sector. Companies with San Jose plants like the $18 billion manufacturing powerhouse Jabil Circuit, the third-largest contract manufacturer in the world with more than 170,000 employees internationally, offer production assembly and welding jobs that can start off paying $18 an hour, and don’t require a college degree.

Manufacturing jobs also pay 10 percent higher on average than non-manufacturing jobs held by people without college degrees, according to the EIE.

As a lot of these tech companies are interested in wearables and other kinds of hardware to go along with their software, San Jose is really well positioned to help prototype and develop that hardware because of the city’s work to make sure manufacturing was a core part of [its economic plan],” says Schildt.

The plan she’s talking about was laid out in 2010. Despite being the U.S. capital of advanced technology manufacturing, the San Jose metro area has been hemorrhaging its manufacturing workforce. In 1990, the region counted 254,600 manufacturing jobs, and by 2015 that number had dwindled down to 159,100. While companies moved manufacturing offshore over the past few decades, blue-collar workers that’d typically fill production assembly jobs have been packing up to leave because of San Jose’s dropping affordability.

Five years ago, the city huddled together local companies and tech giants to talk about a new tide for the industry. The ideas crafted by those stakeholders and enacted by the city — like tax incentives for new manufacturing equipment purchases and lowering sales tax — have helped keep an estimated 65,000 manufacturing jobs in the urban area.

...
https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/san-jose-manufacturing-jobs-tech-pay-equality
 
#203 ·
It's pretty much over for Silicon Valley! Portland is stealing Silicon Valley's thunder by offering great urban core amenities which Silicon Valley doesn't have. Pity these Silicon Valley for fumbling an opportunity to develop urban core to the taste of these young techies. They blew it!!:bash::bash::bash:
 
#205 ·
http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/09/...nutanix-sees-shares-soar-public-market-debut/

Nutanix IPO sets 2016 record with explosive first-day pop

The San Jose-based company kicked off the day trading at $26.50 on Friday and jumped to $39.40 in the afternoon before closing at $37. The first-day surge came even after Nutanix, which sells data-storage solutions to companies, twice upped the price of its offering.

Nutanix raised $238 million Thursday evening after pricing its shares at $16, making its IPO the largest venture-backed offering of the year, according to Renaissance Capital, which manages IPO-focused exchange-traded funds.
 
#207 ·
http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/10/...lags-south-bay-bay-area-employment-expansion/

San Jose’s job growth solid but lags behind Santa Clara County

SAN JOSE — San Jose is adding jobs at a solid pace, but employment growth in the region’s largest city lags behind the pace of gains in both the Bay Area and Santa Clara County.

Economic development officials in San Jose reported Tuesday that the city’s job gains totaled 2.6 percent in 2015. In contrast, the Bay Area expanded its job base by 3.8 percent in 2015, while Santa Clara County saw growth of 4.2 percent, according to figures from the state’s Employment Development Department.

The East Bay’s job base expanded by 2.8 percent in 2015, while total payroll jobs in the San Francisco-San Mateo region grew by 4.4 percent.

“Our job base in San Jose is much more evenly distributed across industry sectors than you see in Cupertino, Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, Mountain View,” said Michelle Thong of the city’s Office of Economic Development.

...

“San Jose is attracting more tech jobs,” Thong said.

In 2015, San Jose had 92,000 technology jobs. That was an increase of 7 percent over the 86,000 tech jobs San Jose had in 2014, according to the city’s estimates.

...
 
#211 ·
Pop up artist space actually

http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/12/...re-becoming-artists-hub-in-downtown-san-jose/

Pizarro: Former Ross store becoming artists’ hub in downtown San Jose

A creative reuse has been found for the Ross store in downtown San Jose that closed its doors this summer. A group of South Bay artists, led by the Exhibition District’s Erin Salazar and Chris Morrish, are transforming the empty shell into an enclave for artists called Local Color.

The 20,000 square-foot pop-up space at 27 S. First Street has its ribbon cutting Thursday at 5 p.m., and the space will be open for the public to explore all evening. It includes a performance space, a retail shop and a public mural wall; The store’s former shoe racks are being converted into dividers to create studio bays that artists can rent out.

“We’ve turned the artist formerly known as Ross into a creative haven for artists,” said Salazar, a mural painter and seamstress whose Exhibition District nonprofit has been beautifying walls in San Jose for more than two years. “We have about half of that space allocated for very safe artists studios, and we really want to pursue visual arts programming in the space.”

The San Jose Downtown Association is sponsoring the venue and was instrumental in securing the building, which has a tear-down and development project in the works for its future. The San Jose Downtown Association’s Nate Echeverria said the Bader and Sarimsakci families, who bought the former Woolworth’s building and opened Black Sea Gallery furniture store there in 2007, are arts-oriented people and have been very supportive of the project. Local Color has been guaranteed two months in the space, but it could stay longer if the project is successful and the building remains available.

Sadly, when people hear “artist enclave” these days, minds immediately go to the Ghost Ship fire tragedy in Oakland that left many dead. But Downtown Association Scott Knies assured me there’s absolutely no comparison to be made: Nobody will be living in the space, its electrical and fire-safety systems are all still functional after Ross departed and there will be safety inspections.

I got a look at the space at a preview event last week, and it’s a great opportunity for San Jose’s creative community — young and less young. And it’s an opportunity that probably would have been blocked by red tape and motivational malaise just a few years ago. There have been a few signs since the Super Bowl in February that San Jose’s “culture of no” is starting to shift and this is another.
 
#212 ·
San Jose declared best performing city (metro) by Milken Institute for second year in a row.

http://best-cities.org/
http://www.best-cities.org/2016/best-performing-cities-report-2016.pdf

Which factors are determining the divergence in economic performance of metropolitan areas around the nation? Why are some areas thriving while others fall back? The Milken Institute’s Best-Performing Cities index provides an objective benchmark for examining the underlying factors and identifying unique characteristics of economic growth in metropolitan areas. Our index uses a fact-based set of metrics such as job creation, wage gains, and technology developments to evaluate the relative growth of metropolitan areas. While national and international patterns affect near-term performance, and to some extent are beyond a region’s control, the top-performing metros have cohesive strategies that allow them to distinguish themselves from others. They offer important lessons that may be adaptable for other localities.
Here are highlights of the 2016 rankings:
» San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA, repeats as the top-performing large metro in the nation. At the core of the San Jose metro area’s success is its ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship—premier in the world. Look no further than its wage growth during the latest five-year period for which data are available (2009-2014): It was first in the nation, and that’s not even including exercised stock options.
 
#213 ·
Interesting how Milken (and various government groups) use a combined Santa Clara County metric while so many people here consider a project in, say, Santa Clara or Mt. View to be a disaster and fervently hope that it will fail horribly. That would bring SJ's ratings at Milken down as well.
 
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