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NAMED BEST CAMPUS NEWSPAPER IN CALIFORNIA FOR 2022 BY THE CALIFORNIA COLLEGE MEDIA ASSOCIATION
Thursday, May 4, 2023
Volume 160 No. 40 SERVING SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY SINCE 1934
WWW.SJSUNEWS.COM/SPARTAN_DAILY
GRAPHICS COURTESY OF SAN JOSE STATE FACILITIES DEVELOPMENT AND OPERATIONS
Top: Model of how tall the renovated version of the building that is scheduled to be built where the Alfred E. Alquist State Office Building is located. Bottom: The Alquist Development plan is on Paseo de San Antonio and roughly two blocks from campus directly across the street from Hammer Theater Center.
SJSU prepares for largest construction project to date The Alquist Redevelopment project aims to create affordable workforce housing around two blocks from campus By Matthew Gonzalez STAFF WRITER
San Jose State is expanding its presence in the downtown area with a new workforce housing project dedicated to faculty, staff and graduate students. The project is predicted to be complete by 2027. The construction site is the Alfred E. Alquist State Office Building located at 100 Paseo de San Antonio, across from the Hammer Theatre Center and a two-minute walk from SJSU. The Alquist site is 130,000 square feet and currently a minimallyused office building, according to a Facilities Development and Operations pamphlet. The project is projected to be 300 feet tall and with 24 floors, according to the same pamphlet. Charlie Faas, SJSU Chief Financial Officer and leader of the project, said rent prices for the SJSU community will be below market rate, which is a standardized rental rate as determined by property size, type of facility and location. Faas said roughly half of the
housing units will be available to anyone and the other half will be dedicated to SJSU faculty and staff. “It’s not so much today’s people, right, because today’s people kind of figured it out . . . people who have been here 10-15 years have figured out how to live in San Jose,” he said. “Anybody new that we’re recruiting are looking at us going, ‘OK, where’s my rent check?’ ” Faas said when construction is finished, the project will aim to have 1,000 minimum units with roughly half of those units dedicated to the
SJSU community. He said his main inspiration for redeveloping the Alquist building was based on its underutilized nature. A year after first being denied control of the building by the California Department of Government Services, Faas was able to attain control of the building. He said the initiative to transform the space into affordable housing for the SJSU community has been maintained since its inception. ALQUIST | Page 2