Terracommercial Eyes Housing Development in South San Jose

Terracommercial Real Estate wants to tear down a strip mall and replace it with 172 homes in South San Jose.

The San Jose-based investor led by Mike LaBarbera and Robert Facchino II has filed preliminary plans to redevelop the 69,700-square-foot shopping center at 865 Blossom Hill Road for housing, the San Jose Mercury News reported.

The six-acre retail center at Blossom Hill and Santa Teresa Boulevard contains such stores as BevMo!, Scandinavian Designs and Party City. A Mandarin Gourmet Restaurant, Pho 24 Vietnamese Cuisine & Sweet Tea, Buffalo Wild Wings and a Chevron station would be spared.

Plans call for the diagonal strip mall and its parking lot to be replaced by 137 townhomes and 35 accessory dwelling units. The project would be designed by Kurt Anderson, based in

Terracommercial aims to employ SB 330 to streamline approvals for the development. A potential number of affordable units was not disclosed.

It bought the 6.7-acre shopping center, built in 1992, five years later for an undisclosed price, according to Commercial Cafe.

Just to the west, the owner of the Oakridge shopping center redeveloped it after the exit of longtime anchor Sears, ushering in new stores to the regional mall, according to the Mercury News.

A few blocks away, Pacific Housing and Jemcor Development Partners are building 271 affordable apartments at 1007 Blossom Hill Road, to replace a long-shuttered Fish Market restaurant.

Terracommercial Real Estate, founded in 1991, owns 16 retail and industrial properties containing more than 1 million square feet, according to its website.

In May, Robert Facchino filed plans to build 820 homes and a commercial building at 1655 Berryessa Road, near the Berryessa BART station in San Jose.

— Dana Bartholomew