The San Jose Blog

Symphony San Jose Brings Heroes, Villains and Costumes to the California Theatre This October

2026-10-11T07:00:00.000-07:00

October arrives with a ready-made family outing when Symphony San Jose stages Symphonic Spooktacular at the historic California Theatre in Downtown San Jose. Conductor Peter Jaffe leads two performances on Saturday, October 24 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, October 25 at 2:30 p.m., guiding the orchestra through a program that balances bold, triumphant themes with darker, mischievous scores.

The music ranges from Rossini’s William Tell Overture and Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries to Gounod’s Funeral March of a Marionette, Márquez’s Conga del Fuego Nuevo and Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, along with familiar themes from Batman and Spiderman. Vocalist Bianca Orsi joins the orchestra as the concert explores the classic clash of champions and foes in full symphonic color.

Those who want to lean into the season can enter the on-stage costume contest for a chance at spooktacular prizes. Anyone who prefers to skip the costume can still take part by watching the parade of dressed-up attendees. Special half-price youth tickets remain available for guests 17 and under when purchased alongside an adult seat, making the evening accessible for the whole household.

Convenient parking sits at the city-owned garage a block and a half away on San Carlos Street, with entrances on Second and Third. Single tickets range from $35 to $125 and go on sale soon through the Symphony San Jose box office.

This Halloween weekend concert adds another lively option to the growing list of family-friendly events that keep Downtown San Jose entertaining well into the fall.

Tickets and additional details are available at www.symphonysanjose.org or by calling 408.286.2600.

Prologis Files for a 99-Megawatt Box at Charcot and Zanker

2026-10-10T07:00:00.000-07:00

Prologis asked San Jose for a special-use permit to knock down five industrial buildings at 326 Charcot Avenue and put a three-story, 514,000-square-foot data center in their place, plus 30,000 square feet of office. The file is SP26-026, dated September 10. Design power is 99 megawatts, with an on-site substation and a generator yard. If the city and the state Public Utilities Commission both sign off, construction could start in the first quarter of 2028, run about 22 months, and put the plant online around 2030. Nothing is entitled yet.

The grid piece sits at PG&E’s Trimble substation on Component Drive, between North First Street and Orchard Parkway. Prologis would pay for the switchgear expansion and two transmission lines into the site, including a second independent route so the yard does not lean as hard on diesel. The company said it intends to enroll in San Jose Clean Energy’s Total Clean Energy product, or an equivalent, aiming at 100 percent carbon-free supply. PG&E’s statewide data-center queue hit 12.71 gigawatts at the end of June, more than double the March figure. In February the city said the utility was lining up hookups for a dozen unnamed large San Jose projects by 2030.

North San Jose already holds Google, Cisco, and Apple campuses and a growing stack of compute buildings. City tax math on a finished data center has been quoted in the $3 million to $7 million a year range for utilities and property. Water and ratepayer bill fights have stopped similar projects in other Bay Area towns. San Jose has so far treated the use as industrial reuse on land that was never going to become townhouses. A public hearing is required. The PUC still has to bless the Trimble work.

City data-center list: https://www.sanjoseca.gov/your-government/departments-offices/planning-building-code-enforcement/planning-division/data-center-and-other-large-energy-use-projects

Source: The Mercury News

Valley Health Center Opens on Bascom

2026-10-09T07:00:00.000-07:00

Santa Clara County opened Valley Health Center San José-Campbell on Monday, September 28, at 1410 South Bascom Avenue, on the San Jose–Campbell line next to the VTA Bascom light-rail stop. The 10-story, 230,000-square-foot outpatient building holds more than 200 exam rooms. It is the largest clinic in the county system. Services include adult medicine, family medicine, pediatric primary and specialty care, adult and pediatric urgent care, OB-GYN and maternal-fetal medicine, dental, behavioral health, pharmacy, lab, and imaging. Two older San Jose clinics fold into this one roof.

The county bought the converted commercial site from HSRE-PMB San Jose in January for $340 million, financed with a 30-year revenue bond. Officials said owning instead of leasing will save about $112 million over three decades. Construction ran four years. A 600-space garage sits on the lot. More than 11,000 households are within walking distance; about 90,000 people live a 10-minute drive away. Apartments bookend the block. The Urban Village map already wanted density here and putting the biggest public clinic on that corner is the most practical version of that map.

Weekday clinic hours run 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Adult and pediatric urgent care stay open until 9:30 p.m. on weekdays and until 5 p.m. on weekends. County clinics already see 1.3 million visits a year. This building is the bet that wait times drop when primary care, dental, and after-hours urgent care share an elevator and a light-rail platform.

Hours and a service list live at https://www.scvh.org/sjc

Source: San Jose Spotlight

SJSU Puts $5.5 Million Into a Shared Home at Excite Ballpark

2026-10-08T07:00:00.000-07:00

San Jose State Athletics closed more than $5.5 million in private gifts for baseball facilities at Excite Ballpark, the old Municipal Stadium the San Jose Giants have used since 1988. That sum sits inside a larger athletics haul of more than $19 million since July 1, a department record according to senior deputy athletic director Scott MacDonald. The cycle is still early. The baseball money pays for a dedicated Spartan clubhouse and coaches’ offices, a team weight room, laundry, and access to bullpens, batting cages, and the complex’s sports-medicine rooms. Work for the university side is slated to finish in 2027, with the new clubhouse aimed at April.

The Giants and Diamond Baseball Holdings already funded most of the park-wide upgrades under a 25-year lease that runs through 2050 and a capital package of about $20 million meant to meet Professional Development League standards. City Hall agreed to reimburse up to $5 million of the field and dugout work over seven years starting in fiscal 2027-28. SJSU’s check will turn the Single-A yard into a shared college-and-pro plant.

Brad Sanfilippo’s roster will practice and play home games on the same grass the Giants use in summer. The arrangement also opens the gates for youth camps and, if the conference calendar lines up, a Mountain West Baseball Championship.

Private donors, not a new bond measure, moved this one. MacDonald tied the total to years of relationship work. The field stays in San Jose and The Spartans get a locker that belongs to them.

More on the project: https://sjsuspartans.com/news/2026/09/23/more-than-dollar55-million-raised-to-transform-the-future-of-spartan-baseball

San Jose Wishlist - Halloween in the Park (Part XVIII)

2026-10-07T10:31:00.000-07:00

As Halloween approaches, it is time to resurrect one of my favorite wishlist items for San Jose: "Halloween in the Park."

Halloween is my favorite holiday of the year. It's the one day where you get to interact with your neighbors and the wider community. The level of creativity in decorations and costumes is also the most eclectic and interesting out of all the holidays for me--whether that's for trick-or-treating, Halloween parties, or work events.

In October it's tradition for The San Jose Blog have a wish-list post for Halloween in the Park. The idea is to build on the momentum that Christmas in the Park brings to San Jose each year and create something of similar scale for the month of October. A lot of the infrastructure such as wiring, lighting, and booths might even be able to be shared between the events. The goal would be to make Downtown San Jose the epicenter of October Halloween experiences, much as it is today with Christmas in the Park.

Below you will find brainstorming ideas we have collected for this concept so far over the years. Please have a look and provide your feedback and suggestions in the comments or on X. Thanks!

The largest draw to Downtown San Jose for many years now has been Christmas in the Park. It has continued to grow year after year and brings in visitors from all over the Bay Area. It's economic impact is substantial and helps keep many Downtown businesses and restaurants alive.

What would you think about a similar event for Halloween? Picture Downtown lit up in orange and purple with elaborate Halloween displays assembled by local artists. Perhaps infrastructure could even be shared with Christmas in the Park (e.g. retail booths). A strong event in October would help maintain traffic between the summer months and Christmas in the Park. Here are the ideas we have so far:

Animated Halloween Displays

Created by local artists
Analogous to the Christmas displays that attract many families during Christmas in the Park (almost half a million visitors)
Family friendly so that everyone can enjoy it (PG/PG13, perhaps around the same level as Great America's Halloween decorations)

Halloween Lighting

Orange, purple, and green LED lighting on trees
May be possible to use programmable LED lighting that can go from Halloween colors to Christmas colors with the push of a button, allowing the lights to stay up for Christmas in the Park as well and reducing setup/take-down costs.

Halloween Food

Booths with candied apples, chocolates, candy, pumpkin seeds, etc.
Food trucks
Trick-or-treating station - a free piece of candy to anyone wearing a costume any day in October (could also be used to hand out promotional flyers for Downtown events/businesses/resources)

Retail Booths selling Halloween items, for example:

Artwork (paintings, glass pumpkins, etc.)
Home decor/crafts like candles
Light-up hats/necklaces/bracelets
Costumes
Zombie/Halloween make-up station

Halloween-themed Carnival Games

Pirates of Emerson and Candlelighters (Fremont) do a good job of providing family-friendly games themed around Halloween
A handful of children's rides could also be added to the Paseo and reused for Christmas in the Park

Interactive Art

Subzero-style, but with a Halloween spin.
Halloween-themed video game kiosks and/or arcades

Pumpkins

Instead of the sponsored Christmas trees in Christmas in the Park, how about decorated Pumpkins (can even be Styrofoam so there is no mess/decay)?
Pumpkin carving station for families.
Pumpkin carving contest.

Costumed Entertainers

Walking around the area, not necessarily scaring people but adding to the ambiance and providing photo opportunities for families

Haunts / Mazes

Would be ideal if these were nearby, perhaps in vacant retails spaces, surface parking lots, the San Jose Convention Center tent, or at SJSU.
Could partners with one of the established San Jose haunt providers such as the Winchester Mystery House or The Bernal SCREAM.

Potential Events

Zombie Crawl / 5k Run
Día De Los Muertos Events (already quite a few today)
Halloween/Día De Los Muertos Bike Party
Horror Movie Trivia Contest
Weekly horror movie screening (perhaps in the Circle of Palms area?)
Costume Ball
Pet costume contests and pet-friendly events

Inspirations:

Winchester Mystery House Unhinged
Candle Lighters
Pirates of Emerson
The Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze (photos below)

Goddard School Stakes Two San Jose Corners for More Than 300 Childcare Slots

2026-10-06T07:00:00.000-07:00

The Goddard School is lining up two San Jose campuses that would add at least 46 jobs and more than 300 licensed childcare seats, one on The Alameda near Diridon and one on Cottle Road in South San Jose. Both projects recycle empty retail boxes rather than punching new holes in residential blocks.

The 821 Alameda site will carry the name The Goddard School of Diridon. Plans call for converting a 12,690-square-foot former CVS into 12 classrooms for as many as 180 children, ages six weeks through 5, plus about 25 staff jobs. Two outdoor playgrounds and an activity lab would cover roughly 12,943 square feet of the old parking field. A Goddard representative told the Silicon Valley Business Journal the school is still in development and pointed to a 2027 opening. The stretch already holds Whole Foods, Chipotle, Anytime Fitness, and apartments at Avalon Cahill Park and 787 The Alameda, a short walk from Caltrain’s Diridon Station and SAP Center. For families who work Downtown San Jose or ride the train, the location is the point.

South San Jose would take a slice of the long-vacant Orchard Supply Hardware building at 5651 Cottle Road. City permits describe a 9,800-square-foot conversion with classrooms and playgrounds for 144 children and 21 employees. Dollinger Properties bought the 4.3-acre lot at auction in 2025. The larger project would also install a Sprouts Farmers Market of about 25,100 square feet and two unleased retail bays. A planning hearing was on the City Council calendar in mid-September. Hours listed in earlier filings ran Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Neighbors include Orchard Town and Country shops such as Baskin-Robbins and Castillo’s.

Goddard already runs Bay Area schools in San Francisco, San Ramon, and Brentwood. Combined, the two San Jose rooms would put 324 infants through preschoolers into licensed care and give the franchise its first foothold in the city proper. Childcare capacity is not a luxury item here. Putting it next to a grocery store and next to a transit station is the kind of reuse that makes empty big boxes useful again. Enrollment and job postings will follow construction. Goddard’s locator page is at www.goddardschool.com.

Source: SVBJ

Diwali Carnival Returns to the Plaza on October 24

2026-10-05T07:00:00.000-07:00

The Association of Indo Americans will bring San Jose Diwali Carnival back to Plaza de César Chávez on Saturday, October 24. City permit hours run 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eventbrite lists the window as 1 p.m. to 10 p.m., with a 2 p.m. start in the description. The plaza sits at 1 Paseo de San Antonio in Downtown San Jose. AIA’s vendor calendar puts expected turnout above 7,500. Last October’s first downtown carnival drew a much larger crowd than the permit number suggested. Entry is listed as free.

Diwali, the Festival of Lights, lands in late October this year. The carnival format that worked in 2025 returns this year: food courts, jewelry and fashion booths, kids’ activities, henna, ritual space, and a stage. AIA’s food list from the last plaza night included chai, jalebi, chaat, dosa, and biryani. A separate AIA show, Dussehra Diwali Dhamaka, is set for October 17 at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton.

California recognized Diwali as a state holiday through Assemblymember Ash Kalra’s bill. The plaza already hosts Music in the Park, Christmas in the Park buildup, and half the city’s civic photo ops. Putting lamps and a sound system there for one Saturday is how a tech city shows it can hold a religious festival without moving it to the suburbs. RSVP and updates live on AIA’s site below.

Minth Pays $8.35 Million for a North San Jose Shop Floor

2026-10-04T07:00:00.000-07:00

Minth California Inc. closed on 2040 Ringwood Avenue for $8.35 million, according to a deed recorded September 17. The seller was Ringwood Properties LLC. The one-story building is 23,800 square feet on 2.54 acres, built in 1986, and listed by JLL as R&D and manufacturing space with 800 amps at 277/480 volts, one dock-high door, one grade-level door, and solar installed in 2015. Ardent Systems, which does electronics manufacturing and storage-device test work, had used the site.

Minth Group, based in Taiwan, makes exterior trim, body structure parts, and battery enclosures for more than 70 automakers. Lucid is among its customers. The company already runs dozens of plants across three continents. A modest North San Jose box will not match a Windsor-scale factory, but it puts a parts supplier inside the same industrial belt as Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid’s regional footprints. General Motors recently bulked up at Stanford Research Park in Palo Alto. Auto work in Silicon Valley has been drifting from showrooms toward engineering and component space.

North San Jose holds more than 20 million square feet of industrial inventory, the largest pile in the valley, with a 7.6 percent vacancy rate and some of the region’s lower industrial rents, per Cushman & Wakefield. Class A product is tight, so buyers have been taking second-generation buildings that still have power and dock access. Ringwood sits near the Milpitas line in the 95131 zip. Minth did not comment on how it will use the floor.

Source: SVBJ

Sharks Finish Second in the NHL’s Offseason TikTok Race

2026-10-03T07:00:00.000-07:00

Hard Rock Bet Canada scored every official NHL TikTok account from June 16 to September 14 and put the San Jose Sharks second in the league. Boston won the composite index at 78.0 after stacking 14 million views. San Jose landed at 65.6. The surprise was not the ranking so much as how the Teal got there.

The Sharks collected 4.3 million total views, fourth in the NHL behind Boston, Toronto, and Florida. What separated them was what happened after the play button. Their engagement rate hit 20.4 percent, the highest of any club in the study. Median views per video sat at 53,300. Chicago, Minnesota, and Carolina also posted strong interaction numbers. Montreal led the league in median views per post at 58,000. San Jose’s mix of reach and reply rate is what pushed a mid-pack view total into a top-two index score.

The index weighted five pieces: overall reach, content performance, fan engagement, shareability, and consistency, so a single lucky clip would not carry a team. Boston’s volume still won. San Jose’s comments, likes, and shares per viewer did more work per video. That tracks with a fanbase that spent the summer watching Macklin Celebrini, Will Smith, and the rest of a young core show up in short-form clips while Mike Grier added veterans and Ryan Warsofsky signed an extension.

The team’s own feed is @sanjosesharks. Tickets and the 2026-27 schedule are at https://www.nhl.com/sharks.

Little Italy Turns Ten on Sharks Way

2026-10-02T07:00:00.000-07:00

Little Italy San Jose will mark ten years of its street festival on Sunday, October 4, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Little Italy Way and Sharks Way, a few blocks from SAP Center in Downtown San Jose. Organizers at the Little Italy San Jose Foundation expect 20,000 to 25,000 people. The district itself dates to 2016--the festival grew into one of Northern California’s larger Italian days, with food stalls, Cal-Italia wine, crafts, museum tours, a kids’ train, and a car row that now ranks among the bigger Italian-marque displays in the country. Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, and Pagani usually show up.

Opening ceremonies start at 11:30 a.m. Grammy-winning accordionist Cory Pesaturo takes 12:15. New York Italian-American jazz singer Vanessa Racci follows at 1:15, then a duo set with Pesaturo at 1:45. Tenor Pasquale Esposito headlines at 3:15 for about 90 minutes. The Anthony Nino Lane Band closes from 5:30. New murals honoring Italian-American work in the valley are scheduled for dedication over the weekend. Proceeds feed the Cultural Center and Museum on the same block.

Today is the paid warm-up: a four-course dinner with wine and a concert by Racci and Pesaturo at the Museum Piazza and Italian Cellar Speakeasy, $75 a head. That is the only ticketed piece.

Festival page and dinner tickets: https://www.littleitalysj.com/little-italy-san-jose-festival

Aven Lands on Sharks Home Helmets Through 2028-29

2026-10-01T07:00:00.000-07:00

The word Aven will sit on San Jose Sharks home helmets starting today against the Florida Panthers, the first night of a deal that runs through the 2028-29 season. The San Francisco fintech, which sells a credit card backed by home equity, also picked up branding at SAP Center, Sharks Ice at San Jose, team broadcasts and digital channels, and Sharks Foundation programs.

Sharks Sports & Entertainment president Jonathan Becher framed the pact to the Silicon Valley Business Journal as a working partnership rather than a logo rental. Aven spokesperson Rick Chen said the club’s audience lines up with the company’s target: Bay Area homeowners who might use a lower-rate card instead of a conventional one.

The timing is not accidental. After the second half of last season, Becher said broadcasts, social traffic, season-ticket memberships, and merch all moved up. Inbound partnership inquiries tripled versus a year earlier. Team deals now range from about $100,000 to more than $10 million a year. On the ice the club is selling a young core: Macklin Celebrini (NHL 27 cover athlete), Will Smith, Ivar Stenberg, and Michael Misa.

Source: SVBJ

A $500,000 Green Room Puts Levitt Closer to St. James Park

2026-09-30T07:00:00.000-07:00

Aart de Geus, the former Synopsys CEO who still plays guitar in a blues band, put $500,000 toward a permanent Levitt Pavilion stage in St. James Park. The gift carries naming rights. He assigned them to the green room and put Chris Wilder’s name on the door. Wilder, former executive director of the Valley Health Foundation and a onetime San Jose Jazz board chair, survived a massive stroke in 2021. The two met when Wilder invited de Geus to a CEO jam at Jazz Summer Fest and later formed Legally Blue, Wilder on bass, de Geus on guitar.

Friends of Levitt Pavilion San Jose have staged free summer shows in the park for years while chasing a fixed venue. Construction is slated to start next summer, with Levitt Foundation money layered on top of local gifts. The finished pavilion is supposed to host 40 to 50 free concerts a year plus rentals for schools, nonprofits, and civic groups. The group’s own math puts $14.3 million a year into the Downtown San Jose economy and 50 regional acts on the payroll. Suzanne St. John Crane, the organization’s director of strategy, called de Geus a useful example of a tech principal writing a check instead of waiting for someone else.

De Geus has said Silicon Valley still under-funds the arts relative to the money and the number of engineers who moonlight as musicians. The last pop-up of the 2026 season packed the lawn for Peach Tree Rascals on September 6. The next step is steel in the park, not another season of rented risers.

Give and follow the build at https://www.levittsanjose.org.

Source: SiliconValley.com

SAP Center Puts the Letters Back Up as Phase One Wraps

2026-09-29T07:00:00.000-07:00

The SAP Center letters are back on the south entrance, hung a little higher to clear a new digital display and the footprint of an expanded Sharks team store. That store is the headline of Phase One of the Teal Reimagination, a multi-year overhaul budgeted at about $425 million. Phase One itself cost just under $30 million and is scheduled to finish this fall.

Opening night is October 1 against the Florida Panthers. Fans walking in that week will find a new bar with eight points of sale at the top of the south-side escalators, a guest-experience kiosk shifted nearby, and Section 216 turned into a walk-through grab-and-go market with self-checkout. The team store above the south doors is slated for mid-November and will run about three times the size of the current shop. Jon Gustafson, the Sharks’ senior vice president, told the Silicon Valley Business Journal the retail upgrade is the biggest visible change of this first slice.

Phase Two starts in January 2027 with locker rooms and a premium lounge. After the 2026-27 season ends, the building is set to go dark for concerts through summer 2027 so the heavy structural work can happen without a mid-week show in the way. That phase is meant to be ready for the 2027-28 opener. Later chapters call for a reseated lower bowl that could add about 100 seats, more food-and-beverage points, restrooms, premium rooms, and new entries. About 90 percent of Sharks staff will move later this year to 450 W. Santa Clara Street so current arena offices can become home and visitor locker space.

Five or six phases remain on the table depending on costs. Perkins&Will designed the work. Renderings and updates live at https://www.tealreimagination.com. Tickets for October 1 are available at https://www.nhl.com/sharks.

Source: SVBJ

SummerHill Locks In 6.3 Acres for 616 North San Jose Apartments

2026-09-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

Del Rey Investment Co. signed a contract to sell SummerHill Apartment Communities two empty parcels at Baypointe Parkway and Zanker Road: 3.7 acres at 240 Baypointe and 2.6 acres at 255 Baypointe. Closing deadlines in the county files run to late July 2028 for the larger lot and late July 2029 for the smaller one. The price stayed off the record.

If the city signs off, SummerHill would put 315 apartments in a six-story building at 240 and 301 apartments in an eight-story building across the street at 255, for 616 units on 6.3 acres. Filings list a club room, lounge, fitness center, and two-level roof decks on the six-story side; the eight-story side would add a bike room, pool deck, and roof deck. Both sit over podium parking. The sites had been flagged earlier on Affordable Housing Overlay maps. No construction calendar is attached yet. Final entitlements still have to clear San Jose planners.

The same developer is already at work a block away at 210 Baypointe, where 42 townhomes and a 292-unit rental building are replacing a one-story office. Baypointe VTA light rail is the commute argument. North San Jose has been the city’s designated tech-job cluster for years; putting mid-rise housing on leftover pads next to that cluster is the general-plan logic in plain language. Del Rey’s principals, John Arrillaga Jr. and Jason Peery, sit in the family line of Peery Arrillaga, the firm that assembled much of the valley’s suburban office stock.

Source: The Mercury News

Dollar Tree Joins the Next Wave at The Plant

2026-09-27T07:00:00.000-07:00

Dollar Tree is combining three storefronts at The Plant, the 650,000-square-foot power center at Monterey Road and Curtner Avenue, into a new shop at 2151 Monterey. Suites 40, 60, and 80 add up to about 9,772 square feet on the leasing flyer. Suite 40 used to be Payless. No opening date has been posted. A Customer Service Associate listing already uses that Monterey Highway address, which is usually a sign the build-out is underway. Dollar Tree opened more than 100 stores in the first quarter of 2026 and still plans about 400 new locations this year even while closing 75 others.

The Plant has been filling holes since Arc Capital Partners and Milan Capital Management bought the center for $95 million in August 2024. Vacancy had been high under the previous owner. Target and Home Depot still sit as shadow anchors; Realty Income paid $73 million for the Home Depot pad in late 2024 without changing the store. Best Buy, Ross, Ulta, PetSmart, and a string of restaurants never left.

Vallarta Supermarkets is slated to take the old Toys R Us box, close to 60,000 square feet, with a November target. That would be Vallarta’s first Bay Area store and would put a full cocina next to the big-box row. Chikin Drip, the San Jose hot-chicken outfit, already opened a second kitchen at 81 Curtner inside the same property. Sixteen dining spots and ten national anchors are the pitch the landlords have been using.

The full directory and hours are available at https://www.plantsanjose.com.

Source: SVBJ

Council Takes Up a Five-Year Parking Hike on Tuesday

2026-09-26T02:34:00.000-07:00

City Council will hear a revised downtown parking plan on Tuesday, September 29. Downtown Parking Board Vice Chair Tamiko Rast sent an open letter last week asking the council to pause. The Department of Transportation’s five-year ladder would raise garage hourly rates by $1 in year one and special-event garage rates by $3. Year two would add $1 an hour to about 1,600 core meters now at $2. Year three would keep those meters running until 9 p.m. instead of 6 p.m. Year four would add another $2 to event rates. Year five would lift every city meter by $1. The first 90 minutes in city garages, including the Convention Center Garage, would stay free. Sundays would stay free.

The Parking Fund takes in about $15 million a year. The current budget already pulled $1.2 million from that fund into the general fund to help cover a deficit north of $26 million. Staff project the full rate package, once it lands in 2030, would add about $4 million a year. Last fiscal year the fund also sent $972,000 to items outside Transportation, including fireworks, Downtown Ice upgrades, and business-development programs. Rast’s complaint is that the city is asking drivers to pay more while garages still have bad lighting, broken elevators, thin security, and dirty floors, and while the Parking Board has seen late packets and canceled meetings.

The San Jose Downtown Association made the same point in June, when the first version of the hike was yanked off the consent calendar after restaurant and bar owners filled the chambers. Raising the price of a dinner-and-show night without fixing the garage that night ends in is a tax on the recovery downtown has been trying to buy. Staff argue San Jose’s $2 meter is still cheap next to Oakland and San Francisco, and that evening demand now exists. Both can be true. The vote on Tuesday is whether the extra dollar goes into concrete and cameras first, or into the hole in the general fund.

City notice: https://www.sanjoseca.gov/Home/Components/News/News/7535/16

Source: San Jose Spotlight

SoFA Street Fair Takes Over First Street on Sunday

2026-09-25T12:00:00.000-07:00

SoFA Street Fair Fall 26 lands Sunday, September 27, from 2 p.m. to about 7:30 p.m. across South First Street and the side streets that make up the SoFA District in Downtown San Jose. The posted grid puts bands, vendors, skate demos, burlesque, and independent wrestling on eight stages at once.

Pobladores Stage and Pobladores Dos sit at 501 South First. Silver Truck Stage is at 454 South First. Project X is at 22 East San Salvador. Haberdasher, 43 West San Salvador, runs rotating burlesque sets from 4 p.m. onward. UGWA Stage at 25 East William hosts the wrestling card, including a title match between Dave Dyra and Journey Fatu at 7. SoFA Market at 387 South First keeps the vendor row. Caravan Stage at 50 West San Salvador closes the night with Sad Boy Sinister at 7:30, while Philthy Dronez Y La Brigada De La Cumbia takes Pobladores at the same time. Gunderson High School Concert Band opens Silver Truck at 2. Skatepops and El Guapo split Project X in the mid-afternoon.

The fair shares the weekend with ILLO Mart two blocks west inside South Hall. Anyone already downtown for prints can walk east and catch a set without a second parking hunt. Start at First and San Salvador and move with the sound. The schedule lives at https://sofafall26.sched.com/

ILLO Mart Packs South Hall With 250-Plus Illustrators This Weekend

2026-09-25T07:00:00.000-07:00

San José Made will run the 2nd annual ILLO Mart on Saturday and Sunday, September 26 and 27, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. both days inside South Hall at 435 South Market Street in Downtown San Jose. Admission is free. Last year’s first edition proved the city could fill a hall with working illustrators. This year’s floor holds more than 250 booths. Vendor slots sold out. The first 1,000 people through the door each day get an event-only 4-by-6 notepad drawn by @poxei.

The back of the hall is set up for people who want to make something instead of only buying prints. Figure drawing runs all day, first come first served, clothed models, short and long poses. Charcoal and paper are on loan while they last. Jacquelin De Leon leads a $10 digital portrait class at 12:30 both days and a $20 watercolor class at 2:30. Malisa Suchanya’s wooden-mushroom painting slots cycle through the afternoon. Sunday only, Elda The of Thousand Skies teaches 4-by-6 rubber-stamp carving for $20, noon to 2 p.m. and 2:30 to 4:30 p.m., age 12 and up. Four artists run a stamp rally; spend $8 at their tables and collect a set of riso prints at booth E406 while supplies last.

South Hall sits next to the Convention Center garage. Street parking is free on Sunday and the VTA light rail and buses stop within two blocks. No outside food or drink.

Details and workshop reservations: https://www.sanjosemade.com/pages/illo-mart-2026

Kensuke Takahashi Opens His First Northern California Solo Show at Empire Seven

2026-09-24T07:00:00.000-07:00

Yokohama painter and muralist Kensuke Takahashi will return to the wall he painted last year, then step inside Empire Seven Studios for Yaoyorozu｜八百万, his first solo exhibition in Northern California. The opening reception runs Saturday, October 3, from 6 to 9 p.m. The show stays up through November 29 at 525 North Seventh Street, Suite 10, on the edge of Japantown.

Takahashi has worked full time as an artist since 2005. During the 2025 San Jose Walls festival he covered the exterior next to the gallery with a family voyage told entirely through Shinto figures. No human bodies appear. A monkey in samurai armor, close to Sarutahiko Ōkami, leads the party with a gourd of sake. A tiger, the Tora, wears a shimenawa rope that marks the line between ordinary ground and sacred space and stands in for a mother’s protection. An egret, the Sagi, carries a taiko drum wrapped in a child’s indigo handkerchief. A three-legged crow, Yatagarasu, travels as a stand-in for a first child and a guide. Takahashi later said the wall came from missing home while painting abroad, then left room for anyone else to invent the rest of the story.

Yaoyorozu, eight million, is an old Japanese way of talking about abundance and the spirits that can live in objects, weather, memory, and people. The gallery is treating the indoor work as a closer look at the same world that already sits on the brick outside. Limited signed prints of the mural will be available; Empire Seven asked collectors to email the studio for the pre-sale list.

Juan Carlos Araujo and Jennifer Ahn have run Empire Seven since 2008, first as a Japantown storefront, later as the producers of San Jose Walls, the local arm of the Worldwide Walls network. Bringing a Yokohama artist back for a two-month solo run is consistent with how they have worked: put a foreign language of myth on a San Jose wall, then give the same artist a room where people can stand still. Walk the mural first if the timing works, then go inside on October 3. Details and collector inquiries live at www.empiresevenstudios.com.

PWHL San Jose Gets a National TV Window Before Opening Night

2026-09-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

The Professional Women’s Hockey League locked in its first full-season U.S. television deal with Scripps Sports, which means PWHL San Jose (now called the NorCal Rumble) will arrive at SAP Center already visible in more than 128 million households. ION will carry a Saturday Game of the Week. Scripps Sports Network, the free streaming channel on Roku, Prime Video, Tubi and similar platforms, will add two more national games each week. ION also keeps the Walter Cup Finals and one extra playoff series. Every game will still stream on YouTube and PWHL.com outside Canada.

That package matters here because the local team has not played a minute yet. The league announced San Jose on May 19 as the twelfth franchise and the first in California, part of a four-city expansion class with Detroit, Hamilton, and Las Vegas. Home ice is SAP Center. Practice ice is Sharks Ice. General manager and head coach Troy Ryan has begun signing the draft class; defender Laila Edwards, taken fourth overall in June, put pen to a three-year deal this month. Training camps open November 18. Regular-season puck drop is expected later this year, with the NHL calendar still dictating exact dates around the Sharks and the arena’s renovation work.

Season-ticket deposits of $50 per seat have been collecting since May, time-stamped for priority when packages go on sale. Single-game tickets have not dropped. A nickname is still pending; Hammerheads has been floated in public. What the TV deal buys in the meantime is a Saturday habit. A new club in a busy building cannot wait until the first faceoff to explain who it is. Three national windows a week give casual viewers a reason to find the logo before they find the box office.

San Jose already runs an NHL team, an AHL team, and one of the country’s larger youth hockey footprints. Adding a PWHL club makes the city the only U.S. market with all three rungs on the same civic ice. Interest forms and merch live at https://www.thepwhl.com/en/teams/san-jose.

Source: Silicon Valley Business Journal

San Jose’s Short Film Festival Returns to Santana Row for Its 18th Year

2026-09-22T07:00:00.000-07:00

The San Jose International Short Film Festival will occupy Cinemark CinéArts at Santana Row from Thursday, October 22, through Sunday, October 25. Organizers are calling it the largest edition yet, with more than 150 shorts from around the world packed into more than 20 screening blocks. MovieMaker has listed SJSFF among the top 50 festivals worth the entry fee. For four days the recliner seats on Olsen Drive become the city’s window onto work that rarely gets a commercial run.

Thursday used to mean opening night only. This year a new Thursday Pass adds three afternoon blocks before the 7:30 p.m. premiere: And So It Begins at 2 p.m. (drama, comedy, animation, world cinema), A Brave New World at 3 p.m. (avant-garde comedy and drama), and World Cinema One at 4:30 p.m. (seven foreign-language shorts). The same pass covers opening night. Later days split into familiar lanes: two comedy programs including Make ’Em Laugh After Dark, science fiction under The World Beyond, suspense under I’ve Got a Bad Feeling About This, plus extra world cinema, documentary, animation, and family blocks. Filmmaker Q&As and nightly receptions sit around the screenings.

A single block ticket is listed at $10 to $15. Day passes that cover every program on one calendar day run $30 to $50. The $175 VIP All-Access pass unlocks every block, the opening-night afterparty, the VIP lounge, a festival shirt, the awards screening, and a commemorative lanyard. Guest of Honor details were still pending as of mid-September.

The theater itself is 4K DCP with surround sound, which is more than most shorts ever see outside a festival. Eighteen years in, SJSFF remains one of the most unique movie experiences of the year. Passes and the full block schedule are at https://sjsff.com/tickets/.

OpenAI Looking at a Power-Heavy Office in San Jose

2026-09-21T07:00:00.000-07:00

OpenAI has been circling a 70,000-square-foot building at 2950 Zanker Road in North San Jose, a box whose real prize is not the floor plate but the 19 megawatts of electrical capacity already wired into it. People familiar with the talks said a lease with landlord Peninsula Land & Capital may already be signed. OpenAI did not comment. Roger Fields’ firm bought the property in 2024 after Electric Hydrogen had poured extra power into a site that already sat on a fat electrical feed.

That feed is why the rent under discussion was reported above $6 per square foot per month, more than double the recent asking average for North San Jose research-and-development space. Brokers have been listing ordinary R&D product in the low-to-mid twos. A tenant willing to pay triple that rate is not shopping for cubicles. Colliers has marketed the same address as high-performance industrial space with lab rooms, a data-center designation, five grade-level doors, a fenced yard of nearly 21,000 square feet, and 19 megawatts available, language aimed at hyperscale computing and heavy manufacturing rather than a conventional office user.

North San Jose has spent decades as a semiconductor and R&D corridor along Zanker, First Street, and the airport fringe. Vacancy in the submarket has been elevated while companies handed back older campuses, yet the buildings that already hold serious power have not sat idle. Figure AI, Credo, Archer Aviation, and others have taken large blocks nearby. The same shortage of ready megawatts that pushed Bloom Energy and Heron Power into expansion mode is now pulling AI names toward industrial shells instead of glass campuses. OpenAI has also been linked to a much larger Mountain View office deal; a Zanker lease would be a different kind of footprint, smaller in people and larger in watts.

San Jose officials have treated data-center and high-load users as a tax and utility revenue play when the projects stay inside existing industrial districts. Nineteen megawatts is modest next to the multi-gigawatt campuses OpenAI has announced in Ohio and Georgia, which is part of the point. A 70,000-square-foot building already on the grid can come online without a new substation fight. If the lease closes, North San Jose will have another reminder that the next wave of Silicon Valley demand is arriving first where the wires already are.

Source: Silicon Valley Business Journal

Symphony San Jose Opens Its 25th Anniversary Season With America at 250

2026-09-20T12:00:00.000-07:00

The California Theatre at 345 South First Street will open Symphony San Jose’s 25th anniversary season on Saturday, October 3 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, October 4 at 2:30 p.m. The program, titled THE NEW WORLD: America at 250, ties the orchestra’s own milestone to the nation’s 250th year through three works that travel from the mythic West to a brand-new Bay Area premiere and on to Dvořák’s most famous symphony. The same season also marks the California Theatre’s 100th anniversary and 150 years since San Jose first heard an orchestral concert, so the weekend lands with extra weight for anyone who cares about Downtown San Jose’s cultural life.

Aaron Copland’s Billy the Kid Suite still does what it has done since 1938: pull folk tunes, open-sky harmonies, and gunslinger swagger into a few tightly scored scenes. After that, pianist Joyce Yang will give the Bay Area its first hearing of Jonathan Leshnoff’s Rhapsody on America, a work Symphony San Jose co-commissioned. Leshnoff wrote the rhapsody as a lyrical, rhythmically restless meditation on the American spirit, and Yang has already introduced it elsewhere in the commissioning consortium. The evening then turns to Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, “From the New World,” composed during his years in the United States and still the piece most people reach for when they want landscape, longing, and a big-hearted finish in the same hour.

Ken-David Masur will conduct both performances. The German-born American maestro, recently concluding a long Milwaukee Symphony tenure and a frequent guest with major U.S. orchestras, brings a clear beat and a taste for programs that mix familiar landmarks with living composers. Yang, a Van Cliburn silver medalist known for color and power at the keyboard, sits at the center of the Leshnoff. Together they give the anniversary opener a guest list that matches the occasion.

Saturday night adds an Opening Night Fanfare before the concert: a complimentary sip of champagne, live music, ballet dancers, and extra performances in the lobby as the house fills. Music Notes talks start one hour before each concert inside the auditorium. Adult ticket buyers can add guests age 17 and under at half price; single tickets run $35 to $125, fees included. The whole program lasts about one hour and 50 minutes with intermission.

Tickets and youth pricing details are at www.symphonysanjose.org or 408.286.2600.

Kids Day in the Park Fills Plaza de César Chávez This Afternoon

2026-09-20T07:00:00.000-07:00

Bay Area Parent’s Kids Day in the Park lands on the same Downtown lawn that hosts Music in the Park, and the gates open at 11 a.m. today, Sunday, September 20. Entry is through the San Carlos Street side of Plaza de César Chávez, next to the Quetzalcoatl statue. Advance tickets cost nothing. A walk-up ticket at the door runs $20, so reserve a free pass before leaving the house if that is still an option.

Oakland’s Alphabet Rockers headline the stage. Kaitlin McGaw and Tommy Soulati Shepherd built the group in 2007 around hip-hop that talks to kids without talking down to them, and the catalog now carries both a Grammy for Best Children’s Music Album and an Emmy. The set is the musical center of a day built for strollers and short attention spans: bounce houses, booths from local organizations and businesses, food trucks, and whatever other activities the organizers packed onto the grass.

A few house rules will save a wasted trip. Outside food, drinks, and water bottles stay in the car. The festival is mostly cashless. Pets other than service animals are out. Chairs are not allowed; blankets smaller than 6 by 8 feet can go on the lawn. Bags should be a clear tote no larger than 12 by 12 by 8 inches or a small clutch. Strollers and wheelchairs are fine, and the plaza is ADA accessible if you flag limited seating in advance. Re-entry is not offered, so treat the afternoon as one continuous stay. Parking sits in nearby garages, including CityView Plaza off Park Avenue and the underground lot at 55 West San Fernando Street.

Downtown San Jose does not get many Sundays that combine a free kids’ festival with a Grammy-winning act on the city’s most familiar outdoor stage. Grab the free ticket, pack a small blanket, and let the bounce houses and the Rockers do the rest. Reserve passes and read the full bag policy at https://www.caltix.com/e/kids-in-the-park-2026/tickets.

Ignite Takes Over the Old Sushi Confidential Corner in San Pedro Square

2026-09-19T07:00:00.000-07:00

The sign that once pointed San Pedro Square visitors toward Sushi Confidential or the SAP Center has been covered. In its place, Ignite has already started a soft opening at 26 North San Pedro Street, two weeks after the sushi house served its last rolls at the end of August. Owner Hima Adusumilli is betting the same patio that fed concert and hockey crowds can hold a different kind of night: fire-grilled skewers, smash burgers, wings, bowls, and a cocktail list meant to keep people at the table after dinner.

The room runs about 3,700 square feet inside with a patio of roughly 3,500 square feet opening onto the car-free square. Head chef Felipe Chen is running an early menu that includes an Ignite Smash Burger, loaded nachos, truffle Parmesan fries, balsamic wings, and seafood baskets, with more dishes still arriving. Soft-opening hours have been dinner-first: 4 to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 4 p.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday, and 3 to 9 p.m. Sunday. A grand opening is set for October 2. The bar poured 11 cocktails and 15 beer taps at launch, and Adusumilli has said nightlife, DJs, and security will follow once the kitchen settles.

About 15 people work the floor and line so far, including eight who stayed on from Sushi Confidential. That continuity matters on a block where regulars already know the faces. Randy Musterer, who built the Sushi Confidential group, framed the exit as a shift toward catering, live action stations, hand-roll bars, and new restaurants elsewhere in the Bay Area, not a retreat from San Jose. The Willow Glen dining room, Campbell and Morgan Hill spots, and the SAP Center stand all remain. Corporate events simply grew faster than one downtown dining room could serve.

A second change is forming a few doors away. The Silk Route Bar and Kitchen will take the two-story, 6,800-square-foot space at 17 North San Pedro Street, the former Olla Cocina site that later hosted a short-lived Bar Tako pop-up and a cancelled Santos Mexican steakhouse plan. Jasbir Singh and Mandeep Jandir, who already run The Brit Sports Pub around the corner, have put nearly $1 million into an upscale Indian dining room and about 25 jobs. They have aimed the concept at a gap Downtown San Jose still has: a full-service Indian kitchen with a real cocktail program, not another quick lunch counter.

Turnover on this stretch can look like loss until the next kitchen lights the patio. San Pedro Square still functions as one of the few places in the city where dinner, a late second round, and a walkable crowd occupy the same block. If Ignite holds the night and Silk Route fills the Indian fine-dining hole this fall, the square will have traded one long-running sushi house for two new reasons to stay out. Hours and menus for Ignite are at www.eatatignite.com. The grand opening is October 2.

Source: SVBJ