Tall & Urban News

A new downtown San Jose office tower is expected to begin construction in autumn, marking the beginning of a mega-campus envisioned by developer Jay Paul Company for the urban core of the Bay Area’s largest city.

The office tower is expected to total 800,000 square feet (74,322 square meters) and would sprout at 200 Park Avenue near the corner of South Almaden Boulevard in downtown San Jose, according to Jay Paul and Newmark Knight Frank, a principal marketing agent for the project. “This will be unlike anything ever built before in downtown San Jose,” said Phil Mahoney executive vice chairman with Newmark Knight Frank.

Jay Paul Company paid US$50 million for 200 Park Avenue and another US$50 million for the adjacent site at 282 South Almaden Boulevard. Mark Schmidt, senior managing director with the San Jose office of commercial real estate firm CBRE, and Mahoney arranged the property purchases.

Those deals were conducted 11 months after Jay Paul paid US$283.5 million in July 2018 for nearly all of Cityview Plaza, a vast mixed-use complex right across Park Avenue that is ripe for a massive redevelopment and the creation of an office campus geared towards large tech firms.

“It will probably be in the early fall when we start construction” on the office tower at 200 Park, Mahoney said.

Cityview Plaza redevelopment and the upcoming tower across the street would work in synergy with each other. “This is going to be a single development,” Matt Lituchy, chief investment officer with Jay Paul Company, said in a recent interview about the company’s latest purchases in downtown San Jose.

Ambitions for a coordinated campus could be enhanced by the city of San Jose’s plans to create and nurture a pedestrian-friendly boulevard that would encourage people to meander along Park Avenue.

The new tower would be the first office high-rise in downtown San Jose built on a speculative basis since the completion in 2010 of the Riverpark 2 tower a few blocks away on West San Carlos Street.

Adobe plans to break ground by the end of July on a new high-rise in the city’s urban center, greatly expanding its downtown San Jose headquarters campus. But the Adobe tower would be built specifically for the tech company and does not fall into the speculative development category.

Starting in the summer of 2018, Jay Paul Company has struck deals to buy five key downtown San Jose properties for a head-spinning $659.5 million.

Cityview Plaza will potentially contain 3.4 million square feet (315,870 square meters) of office space, enough room for 17,000 to 23,000 workers, once it’s redeveloped as a new tech campus. The new tower across the street at 200 Park Avenue would mean Jay Paul intends to develop 4.2 million square feet (390,192 square meters) on the two sides of the street.

For more on this story go to The Mercury News.