Plaza de San Jose
"Plaza de San Jose" Published in Real Estate & Construction Review - Northern California Edition
Plaza de San Jose is a first-class community shopping center located at a major intersection in the heart of southeast San Jose. Anchored by Target and Walgreens, the project is a key component of the Plaza de San Jose retail district and provides a wide variety of restaurants and other services to the local community and the broader Latino community of the extended Bay Area.
Located on the site of a former blighted shopping center, the project provided a unique opportunity to use the best of the strong existing merchants as its foundation while adding new and necessary retail services to the community.
According to W. Stuart Lyle, AIA, principal for SGPA ARCHITECTURE AND PLANNING, the project's architect, the predominantly Mexican community pointed to the Spanish Colonial town squares common in Guadalajara as examples of what it wanted for the project. Consequently, generous plaza areas for families to gather are a key component of the center's design, and the buildings are reminiscent of the multistory colonial buildings that surround the plazas in Mexico.
In addition, community members wanted the project to have a mixture of Latino and American stores. While they wanted the project to be reminiscent of Mexico, they also wanted it to be clearly American and include ample landscaping and national tenants to complement the Latino stores. "They told the team that if they wanted to shop somewhere that was identical to Mexico, they would have remained in Mexico," said Lyle.
Integrating the needs of the large national retailers with the unique requirements of the Latino retailers and the community's desires was difficult. However, a 300 percent increase in rain during the project posed the greatest challenge for the team. The team's already tight deadlines necessitated team coordination and communication. According to Reynolds, San Jose Construction Company, Inc., the project's general contractor put in many late nights and made extra efforts to ensure the project's timely completion.
According to John A. Reynolds, project manager for Blake Hunt Ventures, one of the project's owners/developers, the owner/developer team attended hundreds of community meetings in more than five years to see the fulfillment of this project. And this dedication has paid off. He said, "We are very proud of Plaza de San Jose."
-June Campbell
