Tall & Urban News

A new downtown San Jose office tower is pushing forward with an early 2021 construction start, a high-rise that would sprout a short distance from a huge transit village proposed by Google, according to the project’s developers.

The 21-story project, planned for a site at 51 Notre Dame Ave. next to Carlysle Street in downtown San Jose, would feature retail, multiple floors of offices, and a number of floors of residences, creating a unique mix of real estate in a single tower.

“We are moving ahead with this project,” said Dennis Randall, president of Acquity Realty.  “We are proceeding, even though things are hard in the middle of a pandemic.”

The project is planned for 51 Notre Dame Ave. and is not far from a proposed Google transit village and new office towers currently under construction, one by tech titan Adobe and the other by savvy development firm Jay Paul Co.

One reason behind the confidence that Acquity Realty has in its Carlysle project: The inherent economic strength of Silicon Valley.

Acquity executives believe the Carlysle tower has excellent prospects even in the face of business shutdowns that have been imposed by state and local government agencies to combat the coronavirus, resulting in widespread furloughs and layoffs.

“Silicon Valley is the No. 1 economy on the planet,” Randall said. “Jobs will come back very quickly here.”

The Carlysle complex, when completed, would consist of about 123,000 square feet (11,427 square meters) of office space, 290 residential units, and about 7,600 square feet of ground-floor retail space, according to San Jose city planning documents.

“The strength of the Carlysle project is that it is a mixed-use building that has a substantial office component and a substantial residential component,” said Erik Schoennauer, a San Jose-based land-use and property consultant who has been helping to guide the development efforts for the site through the city planning process.

Steinberg Hart, an architectural firm, designed the project.

Mixed-use towers frequently feature housing with ground-floor retail or offices with ground-floor retail. In San Jose, an office tower with large components of offices and residential is unusual.

The formal construction start for The Carlysle is slated for around March 2021, although demolition of the existing structures could begin by the end of 2020, estimated John Pringle, chief executive officer of Acquity Realty.

The tower would feature several amenities for building users.

“We have an enlarged patio on the 10th floor, fitness center on the 20th floor, and a pool and lounge on the 21st floor,” Pringle said.

The significant amount of office square footage, as well as the nearly 300 residential units, are expected to bolster the project significantly.

Plus, the project’s developers plan to market the office component to smaller tenants that would be unlikely to seek space in one of the huge tech campuses that are being eyed in downtown San Jose. The office space could be filled by one to five tenants, potentially.

“The project can take advantage of the relative strengths of both office and residential,” Schoennauer said.

For more on this story, go to Mercury News.