Wanted: A good home for a 109-year-old apartment building in downtown San Jose.
Developer KT Urban has made an offer somebody needs to take: They’ll move a historic, four-apartment building to a vacant or underutilized lot in the downtown San Jose area and pick up the transportation costs.
KT Urban Principal Mark Tersini says it’s an outside-the-box attempt to save the Pallesen apartment building, a 1910 Mission Revival structure on First and Reed streets that would be demolished if no one wants it. The whole site — which includes the offices of Garden City Construction — is proposed for for a 27-story mixed-use, residential project called Garden Gate Tower, which still needs city approvals.
Tersini said they’ve had lousy luck finding a new location for the building, which the company plans to sell, and teamed up with the San Jose Downtown Association to get the word out about the moving offer. The Pallesen apartments are on San Jose’s historic resources inventory, as a structure that is eligible to be listed on both the National Register of Historic Places as well as the state historic registry.
The offer is restricted to the downtown area, Tersini said, because of the difficulties associated with moving the two-story building south of Interstate 280. “It could be done, but probably not without destroying the historic integrity of the building,” he said. And it would be best to have the building surrounded by homes of a similar age and style, which are in abundance in the greater downtown area.
Anyone with a vacant downtown lot that’s interested can contact Jennifer Jodoin at 408-257-2100 or jjodoin@kturban.com.
By the way, the City Center Motel sign with its diving lady is another historic element on the proposed development site, but that’s currently planned to be placed atop the tower. Sadly, that puts the sign out of sight for pedestrians but at least it will survive.
MAGIC TRIBUTE TO A TEACHER: None of Betty Peck‘s decades as a beloved teacher were spent at Mulberry School in Los Gatos, but the private, K-8 school shares Peck’s ethos about the value of exploration in early learning. On Thursday, the school community — joined by Peck’s daughter, Anna Rainville, and filmmaker Anne Veh — unveiled a collection of “magic mirrors” as a tribute to the 97-year-old Saratoga resident who taught generations of kindergarten students.
The school’s eighth-graders wielded power tools and paint to create four mirrors in Peck’s honor. Three will be placed around the Mulberry campus, including one in the garden, and the other is being presented to Gateway School in Santa Cruz. Never one to be behind the times, Peck watched the whole celebration from her home via Skype and also greeted the kids with a video message.
The story behind the mirror is classic Betty Peck. In a short film made by Veh and shown at the unveiling, Peck explained why her kindergarten classroom contained a cupboard with a full-length mirror behind the door. “Sometimes one forgets how wonderful they are,” she said. So when a child was feeling out of sorts, she’d take them to the mirror, place a hand on their shoulder and remind them they were wonderful. “They would look in that mirror and just melt,” she said in the video.
One of Peck’s favorite sayings is inscribed around the mirror’s frame: “Thank you for every magic moment that makes it possible for me to stand here and to feel how truly wonderful I am.”
CANDIDATES PITCH SILICON VALLEY: With California’s primary election moved up to March, it makes sense that Presidential candidates may want to get their faces in front of influencers in the Golden State like Silicon Valley Leadership Group CEO Carl Guardino. But Guardino had a different idea for candidates: putting them on stage for interviews in front of an audience of Bay Area CEOs, students and other community leaders.
The town hall series is called “Road to the White House,” and so far it has featured Washington Gov. Jay Inslee at the Silicon Valley Foundation on May 1 and Julian Castro, former U.S. Secretary for Housing and Urban Development, on Friday at Santa Clara University. More candidates are being scheduled at different venues, Guardino says, and the public will also get to hear from the Presidential hopefuls as the events are recorded for future broadcast on KQED.
THE NAME GAME: Visit San Jose, the city’s marketing partner, excitedly announced that the San Jose Civic Auditorium’s new name was … the San Jose Civic. Which was what the venue had been called for most of its 86 years until City National Bank inked a five-year naming rights deal in 2013. That contract ran its course and wasn’t renewed, so the Civic is back to being called the Civic, which is what everyone called it anyway.
MAKE YOUR OWN KIND OF MUSIC: The third annual Make Music San Jose celebration is about a month away, but there’s still time to register to host your own music-related event before the May 21 deadline. The daylong, citywide music fest on June 21 — one of many similar events held globally for the summer solstice — is open to professional or amateur musicians in any genre, who will be performing at venues from parks and office buildings to coffee shops and strip malls.
Some venues will offer music lessons and at others, musicians can drop in to play along. Or you can just listen and enjoy. Go to www.makemusicday.org/sanjose to register an event.
This year even has something for civic-minded songwriters, too. The San Jose Chamber Orchestra is inviting the public to submit original, one-minute songs inspired by San Jose. Submissions to the “My San Jose Songs” project received by June 1 will be curated by the orchestra and performed by a variety of groups at San Jose City Hall on June 21. Get more information at sites.google.com/view/mysanjosesong.
