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Wednesday, April 12, 2023
Volume 160 No. 30 SERVING SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY SINCE 1934
WWW.SJSUNEWS.COM/SPARTAN_DAILY
City council talks SJ developments By Alina Ta
STAFF WRITER
San Jose mayor Matt Mahan and councilmembers held a council meeting on Tuesday at City Hall, discussing and reviewing the annual report on the city’s urban development. “Once a year, we actually do sort of a report card and a general plan in terms of how we are achieving the general plans, goals and strategies to ultimately achieve the vision that the community that council has included in this general plan,” said Michael Brilliot, deputy director for citywide planning for San Jose. Brilliot said some of the major aspects of the report is the city’s population decreasing below one million residents and an increase in residential and commercial development.
Housing Brilliot said San Jose’s population is decreasing because of reduced birth rate and the high cost of living resulting in fewer people immigrating to the city. He said in more recent years San Jose’s housing numbers are decreasing because of high costs of rent. Brilliot said overall construction for housing is still occurring less in comparison to before the pandemic. This includes single-family homes, accessory dwelling units and multifamily units. Overall construction for new residential developments decreased by 23%, according to the memorandum from the San Jose’s Planning Commission. “Housing is not a major strategy in [our] plan, but it is woven in many of the general strategies,” he said. Kathryn Hedges, a concerned community member who spoke
ALINA TA | SPARTAN DAILY
Mayor Matt Mahan presents a commendation to members of members of the SJSU Kappa Alpha Psi Alumni Chapter and Delta Rho Chapter for their work in local communities during the city council meeting at San Jose City Hall on Tuesday afternoon.
during the meeting, said she doesn’t understand why the city is not prioritizing housing in its general plan. Hedges said everyone knows affordable housing is the city’s biggest issue. “We are pushing out people who don’t meet the profile of Santana Row residents basically,” she said.
Jobs and Commercial Spaces Brilliot said the city is aiming to achieve a one-to-one ratio of jobs for every employee that lives in San Jose by 2025.
“The goal here is to become not just the bedroom for Silicon Valley, but a regional job center in a Bay Area job center where we actually have more jobs than we have workers that live in this city,” he said. To become a regional employment center, San Jose needs to generate and attract around 13,000 new jobs per year, according to the same memorandum. To achieve the goal, San Jose needs to develop 11,100 more jobs to recover from the job loss that occurred between 2019 and 2021, according to the same memorandum.
Brilliot said the city had a decrease in jobs after the coronavirus pandemic started, but the city’s employment rate is slowly increasing. He said the city has been building more commercial and industrial developments to increase economic activity and job opportunities. Despite this, the amount of square feet for commercial developments has decreased by 66.5%, while the number of square feet for industrial developments has decreased by 72% since the previous year, according to the same memorandum. Brilliot said the city’s response is to create urban spaces with a
combination of more mixed developments, high quality transit and walkable community spaces. “So major strategy number six is really about creating streetscapes for people moving away from an auto-centric city to a city where streetscapes are places where all people have opportunities for all people to get around by different modes,” he said. Brilliot said 14 urban village plans have been approved since 2011. Urban villages are areas that provide active, walkable, bicycleCITY COUNCIL | Page 2
Adobe opens new office downtown By Dylan Newman STAFF WRITER
ALINA TA | SPARTAN DAILY
Adobe’s new 18-story building, Founders Tower, is located at 345 Park ave. in Downtown San Jose accomodates 4,000 employees.
In the midst of mass tech companies layoffs, Adobe has funded construction for a new-18-story building that accommodates 4,000 employees. Adobe’s new building, Founders Tower, is located at 345 Park ave. in Downtown San Jose, according to a March 8 blog post by the company. Ahmed Banafa, San Jose State engineering professor and tech expert, said tech companies hired more staff as they shifted to a remote workforce because of the coronavirus pandemic. He said, because more people moved back to working in person, sizable corporations, including Microsoft and Meta, now have excess staff with less demand for online services and have to make large cuts to their workforces. Banafa said he calls the mass layoff event “the great reset” as these companies are returning to a pre-pandemic workforce. “During the pandemic, companies like Facebook, they doubled the headcount, and Google added 50% at the top of it . . . they kept hiring people in 2020, 2021, 2022,” Banafa said. “It’s all based on the perception and the anticipation of the fact that the demand for the online services and advertisements will continue. ADOBE | Page 2