Old downtown San Jose building with Wild West ties might be bulldozed
SAN JOSE — A veteran developer wishes to bulldoze a downtown San Jose with ties to Wild West icon Levi Strauss & Co. and exchange it with a parking large amount.
Swenson has filed a proposal to demolish the downtown San Jose making at 115 Terraine St. that was crafted in 1949, if not earlier, and is linked to Levi Strauss, the heritage-loaded company whose roots date back to the Aged West when it produced denims and other clothing.
Levi Strauss employed the Terraine Street creating as a producing center starting up in the 1940s, according to files on file with History San Jose.
Swenson seeks to replace the two-story, 44,700-square-foot developing with one of the most mundane of serious estate endeavors short of a vacant parcel: a surface area parking ton.
The prospect of a wrecking ball long term for the significantly less than 1-acre web site at the corner of Terraine and West St. John streets building dismayed Mike Sodergren, an official with the Preservation Action Council of San Jose, an advocacy group for historic buildings.
“We go on to challenge our close friends in management and the growth local community to do so a great deal improved than demolishing a place wherever females who could sew and who experienced sewing equipment were hired to turn into the spine of production for an iconic item,” Sodergren said.
San Jose has a dwindling inventory of historic sources, Sodergren mentioned. “We just want upcoming generations to be in a position to see historic areas as the backdrop for the excellent tale of who we are and how we obtained right here,” he explained. “We can do so considerably better than building floor parking lots.”
Bob Staedler, principal executive with Silicon Valley Synergy, a land-use consultancy, stated it will be “interesting to see how planning responds to this demolition software.”
In prior a long time, San Jose city planners frowned upon proposals to replace existing structures with floor parking lots, in accordance to Staedler. In truth, city planners didn’t even take into consideration surface parking tons to be reputable improvement proposals, he explained.
“While I was with the Redevelopment Company the Preparing Section had a coverage that a parking whole lot is not a challenge,” Staedler claimed. “Let’s see if that coverage has adjusted.”
San Jose-based mostly Swenson, a very long-time actual estate enterprise with several Bay Place homes, declined to comment on the plan. Through affiliate marketers, it by now owns a number of structures and at the very least a single area parking good deal in the immediate vicinity, or up coming to, the 115 Terraine St. building.