A small swath of Santa Clara has produced more housing units in the last year than the entire city of San Francisco.
Clara Junction, near Levi’s Stadium, has four large new apartment complexes with 1,358 units opening in the coming months, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. When complete, Clara Junction will have a density similar to big cities — in the middle of suburban Silicon Valley.
The City of Santa Clara has worked with a group of developers to rework a 45-acre former industrial park just north of the NFL stadium. It’s approved for 6,000 homes, Major developers include Related California, which has approvals for 1,600 units, and Ensemble, which is approved for 1,250 units.
For now, one apartment building with 196 units has opened at 2233 Calle del Mundo from San Francisco-based developer St. Anton Communities.
The project started with high interest in 2018, but the pandemic put it on hold. The developers still face the challenge of convincing people with a suburban lifestyle to come to an urban hub.
“We don’t need to sell Santa Clara as a good place for housing,” Lola Brilliot, executive director for Relate’s 20-story senior project Ellore, told the Chronicle. “We had developers lining up — I had to get contract staff to work with us to process the number of planning applications we got submitted that year.”
Over time, Clara District property owners started meeting regularly with city planners to coordinate their efforts.
“It’s pretty unique in the suburbs outside of San Francisco to see this kind of concentrated density that is not in an existing downtown,” Nick Witte, vice president of Related California, said.
In January, Ensemble plans to open the Ave Santa Clara complex with 311 units. The marketing effort happens at the district’s main commercial building for now, a 15,000-square-foot restaurant and beer garden at a former Carl’s Jr. At full build-out, Clara Junction will have 100,000 square feet of commercial facilities.
“We basically put lipstick on a Carl’s Jr.,” Steve Edwards, vice president at Ensemble, said. “Our leasing agents are sitting in the beer garden. Everybody meets there and then walks over to the building. The tenants see there are people here. There is food and wine and beer. There is something going on.”
— Joel Russell