SAN JOSE — The future Berryessa BART station in San Jose has sparked plans for a full-fledged transit village where 10,000 or more office workers could be employed and walk, cycle, or speed to their jobs on the rapid-transit line.
Office towers, a grocery store, restaurants, shops and thousands of homes are being planned next to the BART Berryessa station in northeast San Jose, as part of the Market Park San Jose transit village that is beginning to rise at the Berryessa Flea Market site.
Market Park could foreshadow a vast transit village that’s being planned by Google and its development partner, Trammell Crow, near downtown San Jose’s Diridon Station and the SAP Center. The Berryessa complex also offers fresh evidence that a growing number of transit villages could sprout adjacent to some existing and future transit hubs around the Bay Area.
The most recent transaction to push forward the transit village effort was the purchase by Western National Group of 6.5 acres from Berryessa Properties, the realty firm controlled by the owners of the flea market, said Ralph Borelli, chairman of realty firm Borelli Investment Company, which arranged the property deal. The flea market land is being sold off in chunks and the operation is expected to eventually be shifted to another site in San Jose, such as the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds.
“The goal is a transit-oriented development at Berryessa,” Borelli said. “When you add it all up, there will be 3,500 housing units, retail, a grocery store, and a couple million square feet of offices at the BART station, with connections to the Coyote Creek trail.”
The BART Berryessa station is due to open by year’s end near the corner of Berryessa Road and Lundy Avenue. When it begins operating, people who use that station would be a one-hour train ride away from San Francisco’s Financial District.
“We look forward to creating a vibrant, pedestrian-centric urban village by leveraging the Berryessa BART station to spur private investment in retail, housing and office development surrounding the station,” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said.
Five office towers of 10 or 12 stories are being planned in a strip along the BART tracks south of Berryessa Road. The offices would total 1.5 million to 2 million square feet. About 7,500 to 11,000 people could work in the Berryessa village with direct links to communities as far away as Pleasanton, Oakland, San Francisco and Pittsburg.
“We hope there is a big corporate user out there that recognizes what we are accomplishing here,” Borelli said. “The offices are an exciting new element.”
The office buildings wouldn’t be constructed on a speculative basis without pre-committed corporate occupants, he said.
“We would offer to do a build-to-suit if we got a company that wanted to take one or more of the five office buildings,” Borelli said.
Mayor Liccardo and city staffers urged the property owners and Borelli to craft a major office component as part of the project.
“The BART sites are precious,” said Stephen Levy, director of the Palo Alto-based Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. “Transit villages are what’s happening.”
