Cottle Transit Village: Dense Mixed Use in San Jose

[marmar]

Cottle Transit Village: Dense Mixed Use in San Jose

By Kathleen McCormick
September 25, 2015


[font size="1"]The Blossom Hill Caltrain Station, with a pedestrian bridge funded by HGST, links downtown San Jose and the Bay Area with the data storage technology company’s workplace campus and the developing Cottle Transit Village. (Ken Kay Associates)[/font]


The development of Cottle Transit Village—San Jose, California’s first and Silicon Valley’s largest mixed-use transit-oriented infill site—is well underway after a long Great Recession–led hiatus. Located 15 miles (24 km) south of the city center on a development “island” formed by Cottle Road, Monterey Highway, State Route 85, and the triangulation of three rail transit stations, Cottle Transit Village comprises two new retail/commercial centers, green infrastructure with parks, a bike trail, sports fields, and more than 3,000 homes sprouting up in new neighborhoods next to the HGST campus.

The consolidation of this bucolic former IBM campus—now owned by HGST, a data storage technology company—is being viewed as a value-added model for “rightsizing” an industrial site and reentitling its excess land to create a dense urban village in a largely suburban city that has become a development focus for the fast-changing San Francisco Bay area. Early successes include more efficient land use, greener buildings, retention of manufacturing jobs, and a needed mix of housing, services, and recreation—all linked to transit.


[font size="1"]As San Jose’s first and Silicon Valley’s largest mixed-use transit-oriented development, Cottle Transit Village includes nearly 3,000 homes, many at TOD densities near the transit stations. (Ken Kay Associates)[/font]

Cottle Transit Village is “definitely our first foray into transit-oriented mixed use in a very substantive way,” says Nanci Klein, San Jose’s deputy director of economic development and director of real estate. “San Jose is a city that has been suburban and sprawling, and we want to move to being a comfortable urban environment. We’re aspiring to be a place that has great walkable places, parks and trails, and connections to transit.”

Since the recession, the region’s growth has centered on San Jose, along with San Francisco and Oakland. With more than 1 million residents, San Jose is now the largest city in the nine-county Bay Area, the third-largest city in California, and tenth largest in the United States. Its downtown is considered the unofficial capital of thriving Silicon Valley. Spanning 180 square miles (466 sq km), this affluent city—whose average household income exceeds $100,000—is expected to have 400,000 new residents by 2040. Freeway congestion, along with demand for new housing, has migrated from northern Silicon Valley and San Francisco, prompting San Jose to shape its own growth around dense urban villages. ...................(more)

http://urbanland.uli.org/planning-design/cottle-transit-village-dense-mixed-use-san-jose/

[KamaAina]

1. Not as spiffy as it looks

For one thing, that Caltrain station only has three trains a day in each direction; the last one in the morning leaves at 7:33! (And nothing on weekends. ) I think it would be a splendid idea to supplement Caltrain service with self-propelled railcars between Gilroy and Palo Alto, but that's a ways off.

For another, there is no affordable housing there. Rents are around $2800 a month. Transit-oriented development works better when affordable housing is included, because people paying $2800 a month are likely to use the transit just for commuting and keep their cars for everything else.