Key downtown San Jose housing tower site could land on sales block
A downtown San Jose site where two towers could add more than 700 homes might be sold after the project's developer allowed a key permit to expire.
SAN JOSE — A choice site in downtown San Jose where two towers could add more than 700 homes to downtown might land on the sales block after the project’s developer allowed a key permit to expire.
The property is the former Greyhound bus stop at 70 S. Almaden Ave., where Z & L Properties has proposed two residential towers that would replace the shuttered terminal.
Z & L Properties, a China-based developer with a Foster City office, has for years been eyeing a project consisting of 708 residences and ground-floor retail. But the developer has allowed an essential permit called a tentative map to lapse, a stumble that creates an impediment.
“Yes the map has expired,” said Nanci Klein, San Jose’s director of economic development. “They have to re-do the map.”
In 2017, the San Jose City Council unanimously approved the tentative map and gave its go-ahead for the project, consisting of a 24-story tower, a 23-story tower and retail totaling 14,000 square feet near the corner of South Almaden Avenue and Post Street.
It is one of several downtown projects that Z & L Properties has proposed. The furthest along is 188 W. St. James, a double-tower residential complex with 650 units. But 188 W. St. James appears, according to construction experts, to have taken at least a year — possibly years — longer to build than typical.
“Currently, Z & L is focused on completing the east tower of 188 West St. James, aiming to complete this project by the end of this year,” Z & L said in an email released by Sam Singer, the developer’s public relations representative.
Z & L Properties has begun the process of selling more than 300 condominiums in the western tower, on the corner of West St James Street and Terraine Street. The uncompleted eastern tower is at the corner of West St. James Street and North San Pedro Street.
In May 2021, a real estate alliance of international developer Westbank and South Bay developer Gary Dillabough teamed up with San Jose developers Tony Arreola and Mark Lazzarini to buy from Z & L Properties a vacant parcel near the corner of Terraine Street and Bassett Street in downtown’s North San Pedro district.
Z & L had intended to build 313 residential units on the property but had made no meaningful progress on the project. Eventually, Z & L agreed to sell after the company had tumbled into a default on its development agreement with the city to build the homes. The Westbank and Dillabough group paid $11.4 million for the site.
Similarly, a minimum of visible progress has materialized on the Greyhound site.
“Z & L has not made a final decision on whether to develop or sell the Greyhound property,” Singer said.
At least two development groups that in recent years have become very active in acquiring sites downtown have begun to pursue a purchase of the Greyhound site, real estate sources say.
Singer said the company is “open to accepting offers.”
The Greyhound property, in a particularly sluggish part of downtown, is deemed an important piece in efforts to revitalize downtown San Jose, section by section, according to Bob Staedler, principal executive with Silicon Valley Synergy, a land-use consultancy.
“Sites like Greyhound are too important to be land-banked for the next several decades,” Staedler said. “We need to build out downtown to the best extent possible.”