With the potential for Google to add around 15,000 employees at its planned 8M SF Google Transit Village, San Jose is presented with an ongoing challenge: How can a city grow jobs in a largely undersupplied housing market?
In the next 10 years, San Jose will benefit from more development and have a vastly different skyline, but also increase its population.
“We’re just going to have more humans,” Swenson Senior Director Josh Burroughs said during Bisnow’s Silicon Valley State of the Market event Thursday. “I think that’s the biggest change.”
He said in the next 10 years, downtown and the immediate area around Diridon and Midtown from Valley Fair and Santana Row to Downtown will be more crowded with people.
The current pipeline has 6,000 units nearing or waiting for entitlement with 4,000 units under construction.
“There is a demand for those 10,000 units today,” Burroughs said. “If Google builds and adds 15,000 employees where are they going to live? We have a constant need for housing.”
In addition to the impact Google would have on the multifamily market, panelists discussed rising interest in the North San Jose and Milpitas office and mixed-use market and the benefits of investing in those markets. The Bisnow event was held at DivcoWest’s Century Plaza office complex in Foster City.
Swenson is currently working on a 260-unit off-campus student housing project near San Jose State University. Burroughs said what makes the project naturally affordable is that students pay by the bedroom instead of by the unit.
One of the biggest challenges developers and cities face is ongoing opposition to much-needed housing.
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