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SAN JOSE — More than 100 affordable homes are slated to become part of a huge housing development at a former Fry’s Electronics site in San Jose where 1,000-plus residences could be built, city files show.
The prospect for affordable housing at the choice site in north San Jose was contained in the details for the application to develop the property that this news organization obtained from the San Jose Planning Department.
The development would sprout at the site of a former Fry’s Electronics big-box store and corporate headquarters at 550 East Brokaw Road in San Jose.
The residential project now being floated at San Jose City Hall marks a pivot whereby the site’s owners have ditched their plans to build a vast tech campus totaling millions of square feet on the 19.7-acre property, which is near the interchange of Interstate 880 and East Brokaw Road.
The tech industry’s move to significantly scale back its appetite for new office space in the Bay Area, including Silicon Valley, has made speculative office projects a much less feasible proposition.
Bay West Development, which had proposed an office campus with up to 2 million square feet of office space on the Fry’s site at 550 East Brokaw Road, is now instead pushing forward with a proposal to build residences.
Two versions for residential development have emerged, according to the newly disclosed details in the preliminary plans on file at City Hall. One of these versions would be built but not both. Several hundred apartments could sprout on the site as a result of the proposals.
Here are the versions outlined in the latest San Jose planning documents:
— 1,233 units, consisting of 982 market-rate residences and 247 affordable units. Units for low-income and very-low-income people would be included in the affordable housing units. The 1,233 units would potentially be multifamily apartments.
— 519 units, consisting of 414 market-rate units and 104 affordable residences. This version also includes units for low-income and very-low-income people. Townhomes would be included in this version.
The development version with 1,233 apartment units would consist of four buildings, each with one pool and multiple courtyards, the proposals show. The buildings would contain 290, 302, 310 and 331 units, respectively.
The project version with 519 units would consist of 322 apartments, 135 three-story townhomes and 62 single-family units, according to the preliminary planning documents.
The 550 East Brokaw property is the former location of the legendary consumer electronics retailer’s Mayan temple-themed store, along with the headquarters and large warehouse facilities.
Fry’s Electronics went out of business for good in February 2021.
Separately, Supermicro Computers has leased 124,200 square feet of warehouse space in one of the buildings that eventually would be demolished for the housing development.
The length of the Supermicro lease of the warehouse space that would eventually be cleared away for the housing project wasn’t known.
What is clear, however, is if the housing is built, the warehouse has only a temporary shelf life.
“The major physical alterations outlined in this preliminary application include the complete demolition of existing improvements and redevelopment of the site for residential uses,” Bay West Development states in its proposal.
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