San José’s Pivotal Moment
By Sam Liccardo
Published in the Silicon Valley Business Journal on March 28.
For three decades, the Redevelopment Agency invested more than a billion dollars in highways, hotels, high-rises, and headquarters in Downtown San José. In 2011, the California Legislature shut off the spigot, eliminating redevelopment agencies statewide. Dire predictions of doom and gloom emerged about downtown’s future.
I publicly predicted the opposite – that Downtown San José could rise from Redevelopment’s ashes. City Hall had to learn to pivot, though – to spur job growth resourcefully, without throwing public money at it. Rather than cut deals, we’d cut fees. Rather than steer every project, we’d get out of the way. Rather than attempt to subsidize solutions, Kim Walesh and her small but mighty economic development team reached out to private-sector partners for help.
Three years into the “Great Pivot,” we have much to report.
We’ve cut fees. With high-rise housing stalled for a half-decade, Mayor Chuck Reed and I pushed to cut construction fees in half and to commit to hard deadlines for permits. Construction has commenced on two towers Downtown, with a hotel and three more towers slated to break ground. The anticipation of over 2,000 units of Downtown housing has spurred openings of some twenty new restaurants in the last year, along with the ground-breaking of a Whole Foods store and the arrival of retailers like Muji.
We’ve also gotten out of the way. With prospective tenants reluctant to pay for employee parking, I proposed to reward any tenants signing or renewing a Downtown lease with free parking for their employees for a couple of years. Since then, 159 employers have inked parking deals for over 1,300 employees, filling over a half-million square feet of vacant office and retail space – all without a dollar of public expenditure. Recent arrivals Apigee and Electric Cloud have joined 90 technology companies, and the Mercury News is considering a Downtown move as well.
Finally, we’ve sought help from key partners. Last year, SmartWAVE Technologies and Ruckus Wireless teamed with City IT czar Vijay Sammeta to launch the nation’s fastest public outdoor wi-fi system in Downtown. The Downtown Association hired a facilitator for small business permits, and convened property owners to pay annual fees to plant flowers, trim trees and eliminate graffiti. The Silicon Valley Leadership Group led the two ballot measures that have BART under construction toward Downtown, worked with our Congressional delegation to land a U.S. Patent Office, and even to invited 4,000 galloping Santas to help save Christmas in the Park through the Santa Run.
San José – and every major city – will continue to face budgetary challenges, so our job growth strategies will need to rely on innovative approaches like these. The Great Pivot has helped to revive Downtown, and can provide a model for how to do more, without having to tax and spend more.
You can read the full article online here.