KB to build 1,300 homes on San Jose’s Communications Hill

KB Home has been approved to build 1,304 homes on San Jose’s Communications Hill.

KB Home South Bay, a unit of the Los Angeles-based developer, received a green light from the city’s planning director to build 799 townhomes and 599 apartments on Llano de los Robles Avenue near Grassina Street and St. Florian Way, the San Jose Mercury News reported.

The 140-acre Village Center development is part of a master-planned development launched four decades ago on the 400-foot-tall hill topped by microwave towers south of Downtown.

KB Home seeks approval for Phase 3 and Phase 4 of its five-story development between Altino Boulevard, Hillsdale Avenue and a Caltrain/Union Pacific rail line. Its Village Center includes 32,900 square feet of shops and restaurants.

“The commercial is something that will benefit the community,” Jerry Strangis, principal executive with Strangis Properties, which has provided consulting advice for KB on the project, told the newspaper. “Nice restaurants, coffee shops, health-related uses and healthy foods and drinks. We’re also talking about a wine bar.”

The shops and dining would be on the ground floor of the apartment buildings, similar to Santana Row, according to Strangis.

The property is owned by MTA Hillside, according to SFYimby. Other reports say it’s owned by MTA Properties, based in San Jose.

Communications Hill was once owned by Portuguese immigrant Manuel Azevedo, founder of American Dairy, according to the Silicon Valley Business Journal.

The Bettencourt family, descendants of Azevedo, own MTA Properties and have worked with the city since the 1980s on the hill’s development. Construction didn’t begin until the early 2000s, however, when KB Home built the 760-unit Tuscany Hills.

A master plan for the 332-acre Communications Hill called for up to 4,000 homes, a 55-acre industrial park, a 67,500-square-foot shopping center and open space along an urban-style grid. It was put on hold by KB Home during the Great Recession.

In 2014, KB Home received approval to build 2,000 attached townhomes, small-lot single-family homes and apartments up to six stories, in both Mediterranean and contemporary styles. MTA owns the 55-acre site zoned for up to 1.4 million square feet of industrial buildings, as well as the Village Center site.

Some residents had raised concerns before the Planning Commission about asbestos in the area and what was being done to remediate exposure, according to the Mercury News. A Communications Hill neighborhood association believes KB Homes is working to ensure asbestos doesn’t hurt residents.

— Dana Bartholomew