SAN JOSE — Microsoft, poised for expansion into north San Jose, has bought 65 acres of empty land along State Route 237 between Alviso and Milpitas, signaling that the site fits into its plans to widen its reach in cloud and internet technologies.
The Redmond, Washington-based tech titan paid $73.2 million for the land on the western banks of Coyote Creek, in a location where some tech campuses have begun to sprout.
“We continuously explore opportunities to meet the needs of a future based on cloud computing and internet services, so we’re thrilled to find a great one in the heart of Silicon Valley,” said Christian Belady, general manager of Microsoft Cloud Infrastructure and Operations, referring to Microsoft’s north San Jose land purchase.
The site is being planned as a light industrial center that would include a data center complex, according to planning documents on file with the city of San Jose.
The project is expected to bring hundreds of jobs into the north side of the city, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said Friday.
“We welcome Microsoft’s substantial investment in San Jose, as it seeks to meet the world’s burgeoning demand for cloud capacity,” Mayor Liccardo said.
Two development options are on file with the city, which both would allow development of more than 1 million square feet on the site. The project is called “237 Industrial Center.”
One option would allow development of up to 1.2 million square feet of light industrial facilities. The other option would permit development of a data center totaling up to 437,000 square feet and as much as 728,000 square feet of light industrial facilities, the city documents show.
The sellers in the Sept. 27 transaction were a group of families affiliated with San Jose-based Cilker Orchards.
Not far from this new Microsoft site, KLA-Tencor, SanDisk, Brocade Communications, Polycom, Harmonic, Tivo, Global Foundry, ST Electronics and Marvell Semiconductor operate in big office complexes.
Amenities also have emerged in the area in recent years, with more on the way. Hotels have sprouted nearby on both sides of Highway 237. Target is the anchor of a shopping center alongside the highway. Top Golf is planning a “golf-tainment” center in north San Jose, although Alviso residents have sued in an attempt to block the project.
Microsoft already occupies a Silicon Valley campus, consisting of a multi-building office complex on La Avenida Street in Mountain View, near the intersection of U.S. 101 and North Shoreline Boulevard, not far from the Googleplex headquarters of Alphabet and Google.
For decades, many technology companies bypassed San Jose in favor of expansions in Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Menlo Park, Cupertino and even San Francisco. But within the last year, San Jose has become a magnet for major tech companies’ new outposts.
Apple has bought and leased buildings and vacant land that it intends to use as a future north San Jose campus, which could rival the size of its spaceship campus in Cupertino.
Amazon’s Lab 126 has leased one or more floors in a downtown San Jose office tower, the digital commerce site’s first foray into San Jose.
At Microsoft’s new San Jose site, the company hasn’t made a final decision on which of its development options to select, city officials said.
“I especially appreciate Microsoft’s sensitivity to the surrounding environment, and its continued commitment to sustainable construction and operations,” Mayor Liccardo said.
The San Jose mayor told ABC7 News there’s no more land, and it’s time to build up. In downtown San Jose and in South San Jose, that’s what they’re doing, but really it’s just a drop in the bucket.
So much more is needed to see just a small drop in housing prices and that’s according to the latest UCLA Anderson Forecast.
Our media partner, the Bay Area News Group took a look at the housing data. Researchers found a 20-percent increase in the current level of home building that is needed to achieve even a modest 10 -percent drop in prices. That means Santa Clara County would need about 129,000 new housing units to reach that number.
The East Bay would need to build around 199,000 new homes, San Francisco would need to increase the housing supply by almost 77,000 units, and San Mateo County would need to increase by more than 54,000 units. All of this would take anywhere from 14 years to 36 years to do complete at the current pace.
A $4 billion housing bond measure will be on the ballot in 2018, but even if voters approve it that likely won’t change much for you in the short term.
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SAN FRANCISCO — More than a dozen long-awaited bills aimed at addressing California’s affordable-housing crisis were signed into law Friday, as Gov. Jerry Brown, big-city mayors and lawmakers celebrated the hard-fought victory — but acknowledged that the legislation was just a beginning and vowed to continue chipping away at the problem gripping the state.
“Today we are here to tell those who are suffering that we hear you and are committed to make housing affordable again,” said Assemblyman Richard Bloom, a Santa Monica Democrat.
In the final hours of the legislative session, lawmakers gave final approval to 15 bills that would attack the growing problem in different ways. Two of the bills would create funding for the construction of below-market-rate housing, while others aim to make all housing development faster and cheaper by smoothing the notoriously lengthy and unpredictable government-approval process that has been blamed for the shortage of needed homes.
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, who called the Bay Area “ground zero of California’s affordability crisis,” spoke of growing tent encampments as well as the super-commuters filling the freeways — “driving from a home they can afford to a job that allows them to afford it.”
“My parting words to you,” she said to state lawmakers, “is that we are not done with this work. When you come back to Sacramento for your next legislative season, please do not say that last season was the season of housing and this year we will move on to something else.”
Schaaf was one of about 100 people gathered on a chilly, blustery San Francisco morning outside Hunter’s View, a public housing project with panoramic views of the city. The modern, angular new buildings in the development were built in part thanks to a state housing program that ran out of funding but would get a new infusion of cash if voters approve an affordable housing bond next year.
Senate Bill 3, by Sen. Jim Beall, D-Campbell, placed a $4 billion affordable housing measure on the November 2018 ballot. Beall has said the bond, if approved, would lead to roughly $20 billion in affordable-housing construction when tax credits and matching funds are included.
Beall stressed that the funding from SB 3 was not certain. “The campaign starts now,” he said in an interview Friday. “We have some hard work ahead of us to talk to the voters about this. I think there’s a pent-up demand for new housing.”
Darlene Fleming, a lifelong San Franciscan who lives in the Hunter’s View development, came out to watch the event and take photos with Mayor Ed Lee. She hoped the new funding for affordable housing also goes to repair current public housing developments, like the elevator in her building that she said remains broken despite residents’ complaints.
“They always make a lot of promises, but nothing happens,” the 69-year-old Fleming said of the politicians pledging support for affordable housing.
One of the bills Brown signed into law — Senate Bill 2, by Sen. Toni Atkins, D-San Diego — creates a permanent source of funding to address homelessness and the need for more below-market-rate housing, collecting roughly $250 million annually from a new fee on certain real-estate documents. Home sales are excluded.
Another, by Bloom, would allow cities to again require developers to include affordable rental units — “and I know they will,” he quipped. Brown vetoed a similar measure in 2013, but signed Bloom’s Assembly Bill 1505.
Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Oakland, said the bills would “tackle the NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) obstacles that keep housing from being built” in the Bay Area and across California. Two of her bills, Senate Bills 166 and 167, are aimed at streamlining the development process.
“Getting a permit to build housing should not be a shell game,” she said in an interview Friday. “This doesn’t solve it all, but we’ll have some hope to accelerate building.”
Assemblyman Bill Quirk, a Hayward Democrat, said he was happy with the bills, but he noted that the money they allocated were an order of magnitude less than what’s necessary to tackle the crisis. “We’re talking about $4 billion,” he said. “We need a couple hundred billion.”
Others warned that it will take years to make a dent in a housing shortage that was decades in the making.
The housing package has been championed by trade unions and developers, as well as affordable-housing advocates, for the jobs it will create.
The Van Nuys-based Valley Industry Commerce Association issued a statement ahead of the signing saying that developers have for decades watched as “abuse of environmental laws and convoluted local planning processes” have prevented them from building the housing the state needs.
“We can no longer ignore the crisis this has created, and the shortage of homes for working families is damaging our economy,” said the association’s president, Stuart Waldman. “This package of bills is the right step forward to begin addressing the crisis.”
STATE HOUSING PACKAGE: HIGHLIGHTS
Senate Bill 2, by Sen. Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, will create a permanent source of funding for affordable housing, imposing fees of up to $225 on certain real-estate transactions, such as mortgage refinancing. (Home purchases would not be subject to the fee.) It will collect $1.2 billion over the next five years — and would raise a total of $5.8 billion during that time, including federal, local and private matching funds, according to committee estimates. Half of the money it raises in the first year would go to programs to address homelessness.
Senate Bill 3, by Sen. Jim Beall, D-Campbell, will place a $4 billion statewide housing bond on the November 2018 ballot. Like SB 2, it would pay for existing affordable-housing programs in California that used to be supported by funds from the state’s redevelopment agencies, a giant source of money that was slashed in the wake of the Great Recession and never replaced. If the bond measure passes and is approved by voters, $1 billion of the total would go to extend the CalVet Home Loan Program, which is scheduled to expire in 2018.
Senate Bill 35, by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, will try to tackle the state’s housing-supply shortage. Currently, cities are told every eight years how many units they need to build to meet their share of regional demand — but they are not required to build them. This bill aims to make it harder to ignore those goals. It targets cities that fall short, requiring them to approve more housing developments that fit the bill’s criteria until they are back on track.
Senate Bill 167, by Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Oakland, strengthens the state’s 35-year-old Housing Accountability Act, known colloquially as the “anti-NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) Act.” Cities that don’t comply with a court order to allow development would be hit with automatic fines of $10,000 per housing unit.
Senate Bill 540, by Sen. Richard Roth, D-Riverside, allows cities to determine where housing needs to be built and to create a specific plan for development in that zone, including public hearings and environmental reviews. This is intended to speed up the approval and construction process.
Assembly Bill 73, by Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, will give local governments cash incentives to create high-density “Housing Sustainability Districts” near transit with some affordable housing.
Assembly Bill 1505, by Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, restores the ability of local governments to require developers to include affordable rental units. A 2009 appellate court decision cut off that tool, which cities and counties had used for decades. The governor had vetoed similar legislation by Atkins in 2013, arguing that it could make it harder for a city to attract development, but while negotiating the package of bills with lawmakers, Brown agreed to sign it.
Raya and Michael DeMarquez both grew up in San Jose, got married here, raised their kids here, bought a house here more than 20 years ago and felt settled in the Bay Area life — for life.
Then they lost that house after the 2008 recession, lost their jobs. In the ensuing years, they worked hard to put things back together, rebuilding their careers, renting a house. Yet all the while, they sensed the encroaching costs of change: the tech boom, the swelling prices, the thickening traffic, the culture shift. They started to feel like outsiders in their own home town.
So in 2015 they did something they never would have considered a decade before. They moved. Away.
To Portland, Oregon, in fact, as many Californians have done, often to the chagrin of Oregonians. And while there have been some adjustments and trade-offs (think weather), they’re truly happy they did it.
“We’d never go back to San Jose,” says Raya DeMarquez. “We’ll see if (Portland) is where we’ll stay. We’re giving it through this winter to decide if we can handle the weather — it was rough last year.
“But we’d never move back,” she says. “Never.”
Michael and Raya Marquez escaped the bustle of the Bay Area in 2015 for Portland. Here they are at the Cape Horn Lookout overlooking The Gorge. (Courtesy Raya DeMarquez)
Admit it. You’ve thought about it, too. Usually when in suspended animation on the Bay Bridge, or touring a 1,200 square-foot, million-dollar “starter home” in Pleasanton. Sure, the Bay Area is wonderful, beautiful — I mean, look at that view when you’re stopped on the bridge! But there are greener — or at least cheaper, calmer, less-congested — pastures … right?
You’re not alone in such thoughts. Results of the 2017 Bay Area Council Poll, an annual public-opinion survey, show 40 percent of respondents are seriously considering leaving the Bay Area in the next few years.
But what’s life really like on the other side? We talked with a few folks who have made the move — often finding a common thread to be ongoing effects of the economic downturn. Some abandoned the Bay Area and love their new digs. Others moved, then found the new location wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be and moved back.
Short timers
That’s what happened for Peggy and Tony Ucciferri. They had lived in Walnut Creek for years, then moved to New Orleans in 2012. They stayed nine months.
“When we left (the Bay Area), it wasn’t like, ‘We hate California, we’re leaving.’ We were victims of the recession,” says Peggy Ucciferri. She’d been laid off from her editing job at a parenting magazine. And about a year before that, Tony had left his job in affordable housing and had had trouble finding another gig. So when an opportunity arose for him in New Orleans, the Ucciferris sold their house, took the leap and quickly felt mover’s remorse.
They loved NOLA as a place to visit, but didn’t feel welcome as residents. Their son, still in high school, was miserable with no friends. Tony’s job wasn’t what he’d hoped. And the political climate did not suit their views.
“We live in a bubble here in the Bay Area, and you take it for granted when you’re here,” Peggy says. She was terribly homesick, missing family and friends. “One day we woke up and said, ‘This isn’t working for us. Let’s go home.’ ”
So they made the equally bold leap to move back in 2013, staying with a friend for a couple of months until another friend offered them an affordable rental in Walnut Creek. Tony was able to get a new job. Their son returned to his old high school and “everything was right with the world,” Peggy Ucciferri says.
“I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to buy again — we sold at the lowest point in the market, and now, well …,” she says. “But we learned our lesson. We won’t be leaving the Bay Area again. As crazy as it is, we’re so lucky to be here.”
Homesickness cured
Sadhana Agarwala suffered similar homesickness when she and her boyfriend moved from San Jose to North Carolina in 2005. She sold her Alum Rock district home, and they followed other family members who had all bought homes in a new development outside of Greensboro. In her new home, she too felt at odds with the political leanings and was sad to be “out in the boonies,” she says.
That was until Agarwala and her boyfriend came back to the Bay Area for a visit two years ago — the perfect cure for her long-lasting malaise.
“Tom and I looked at each other and we were like, ‘Oh my God. What the hell happened?’ ” she says. “The traffic is insane. There’s construction everywhere. Everything is too freaking expensive. I was lucky to buy my house when I did and sell when I did. Now, we have five times as much room for five times less money, plus property for our dogs. We’re never moving back.”
Bucolic benefits
Julia Park Tracey, a writer and recent Alameda poet laureate, just moved to the redwoods of Forestville in unincorporated Sonoma County earlier this year. It’s not so far that she and her husband can’t get to Bay Area family and events. But it’s far enough away to feel far enough away.
Patrick and Julia Tracey at the weekly summer farmers market inbr /Forestville. The Traceys recently moved from Alameda to the small town inbr /unincorporated Sonoma County. (Courtesy Julia Park Tracey)
Married 10 years with five kids between them, they had long rented a large house on Alameda’s old Navy base. When they got down to one kid at home, they downsized to a second-floor apartment near Alameda High School. But when Tracey’s husband became disabled, he was no longer able to work, and the stairs became an issue. They wanted to move and no longer pay rent, but knew they couldn’t afford to buy a house here.
Fortunately, they already had a house. A really tiny house at 648 square feet, but a house nonetheless. The 2008 recession had actually worked in their favor, providing a glut of cheap vacation homes that had stood empty for years. So, “with bubble gum and baling wire and coupons,” she jokes, they bought the Forestville place in 2011 for a mere $56,000 to use as a retirement spot far off in the future. The future couldn’t wait, so they made the move sooner and couldn’t be more pleased.
“We’re in a cathedral of redwoods,” Tracey says. “It’s a better environment for my husband healthwise. Santa Rosa’s only 20 minutes away. It’s just over an hour to the Bay Area. I’m working, writing, volunteering. We’re very happy up here. I go outside at night, and there are no sirens, no airplanes. The stars are amazing. Right now, the only noise I can hear is a chicken having a meltdown outside.
“Housing is pretty expensive up here now,” she says, “so it was just luck of the draw that we got in when we did.”
Where to?
The burst of the housing bubble wasn’t so helpful for Raya and Michael DeMarquez, especially since they both were in real-estate-related careers — Michael as an escrow officer and Raya in support services at a title company. Michael was out of work for a year. They lost their home, their savings. They managed, though, and had come out of the doldrums somewhat.
“We were living a good life, but we could not save. It was reaching a point like, OK, what are we gonna do?’” Raya says.
To top it off, they were living in a rental in the neighborhood behind Westfield Valley Fair shopping mall near the San Jose-Santa Clara boundary, which was undergoing a huge expansion, wreaking havoc on local traffic. “And for me, the culture in the area changed drastically,” she says. “You’re in competition for everything, from a parking place to a home to a line at a restaurant.”
One of their three daughters had moved to Portland and loved it, finding it urban with lots of artistic talent — like a mini San Francisco. The median home prices were in the upper $300,000 range at the time. Michael was able to get a job transfer, and they moved in 2015. He immediately “connected and plugged into the city,” he says. Raya found it a little more difficult, but was willing to hang in there.
Portland is getting busier itself, however, with an influx of tech workers, more traffic and new housing. “In the first six months, everything was new, a discovery. It felt like everything kind of slowed down for us, which was great,” Michael says. “Then last summer and fall, I was already noticing that traffic was increasing, and those same forces were at play as in the Bay Area. So this might not be our permanent home.”
Still, when they left San Jose, Raya says she felt like she had escaped something. “The conversations everywhere you went were so negative: it’s so busy, it’s so expensive. That’s all you heard, and it was exhausting.
“Of course, when my parents moved out of the Bay Area 20 years ago,” she says, “they said the exact same thing.”
