Westbank and Urban Eye Mixed-Use Project in San Jose

Westbank and Urban Community are close to building a swirling office and apartment tower in Downtown San Jose that sprouts plants.

The Canada and San Jose-based developers have moved forward with an environmental review of the 21-story tower at 35 South Second Street, SFYimby reported. It would replace a parking lot.

The building, which is called the Energy Hub Tower, is slated to be reviewed by the Planning Commission next week and could be approved by the City Council before Christmas.

The 750,000-square-foot building would include 194 apartments, with nearly half the building devoted to offices. It would include 30,800 square feet of retail space, including ground-floor shops and restaurants and a gym on the second floor.

A four-level basement garage will serve 289 cars. The 1.25-acre property would feature 22,500 square feet of open space, split between a paseo and a “Fountain Alley” walk.

The curvilinear tower, designed by Denmark-based Bjarke Ingels Group, would stand on two residential columns, wrapped in Slinky-like layers sprouting live foliage top to bottom. Above the apartments would be an office block, punctuated with tree-lined, open-air terraces.

The base of the building would include a ten-story arched passage dubbed the Urban Room, with outdoor seating.

To be space-efficient, the offices would start at the 12th floor so its open-floor plates would not be pierced by residential elevators and stairwells.
In renderings the roof appears like an urban forest.

The project, located near the proposed future Downtown San Jose BART Station, is expected to take 34 months from groundbreaking to completion. A start date hasn’t been set.

The Energy Hub is one of seven projects being developed by Westbank, the Urban Community firm led by Gary Dillabough, Hong Kong’s Peterson Group and pension fund OPTrust, which would include 5,000 homes and enough offices for 40,000 workers.

Their proposed Westbank Campus — which includes the Arbor, an adaptive reuse of the Bank of Italy tower, the Energy Hub, Park Habitat, Orchard Residential, Orchard Workspace and Terraine — aims to build dense urban housing and offices with high-end design by the world’s best architects.

Each proposal aims to integrate technology to increase sustainability and reduce the world’s carbon footprint, according to its developers.

Westbank and Urban Community have commissioned Cushman & Wakefield to raise $1.5 billion to build the seven Downtown San Jose projects.

— Dana Bartholomew