SAN JOSE — Downtown San Jose faces significant challenges amid the coronavirus, with most people hesitant to visit the urban core of the Bay Area’s largest city, a survey released on Friday shows.
Two-thirds of the 1,254 local respondents to an online survey said they were cautious, hesitant, or uncomfortable about visiting downtown San Jose this summer or early fall, according to a report Friday by the San Jose Downtown Association.
An array of coronavirus-linked business shutdowns orchestrated by state and local government agencies have chased away customers and merchants from cities worldwide, and downtown San Jose is no exception.
“The challenges are significant in the near-term, and revolve around the lack of people in downtown San Jose, an erosion of downtown’s small business economy, and skepticism that people will return quickly as we move through reopening,” the report by the association stated.
It’s going to take a while for the area and its merchants to recover from the hammer blows unleashed by the shutdowns and coronavirus-spawned economic woes, warned Scott Knies, executive director of the San Jose Downtown Association.
“We have a long way to go,” Knies said. “You just can’t wave a magic wand for the economy to come roaring back.”
On multiple fronts, downtown San Jose is no longer the vibrant city center it was just five months ago.
“We are just not there yet,” Knies said. “We can’t dine inside yet. SAP Center is closed. The convention center is closed. The museums are closed. The theaters are closed. The hotels are suffering. We have a long way to go.”
The survey also determined that respondents had a ranking of the types of venues that provided the highest comfort level for them. In order, ranked from those with the highest comfort levels to those that were deemed the most uncomfortable: museums; outdoor festivals and events; personal services such as salons, barbers, and spas; fitness facilities and gyms; indoor events and performances such as sports arenas and theaters; bars and nightlife venues.
The report also noted that smaller merchants were being battered the worst.
“Storefront businesses, especially those in downtowns, have borne the brunt of this economic disruption,” the report stated. “Many downtown San Jose storefronts have already closed, and more are anticipated to close as pandemic disruptions continue.”
Still, over the long-term, downtown San Jose has plenty of strengths that will bolster the urban center’s return to vitality, according to Knies.
Downtown San Jose’s density, the entertainment centers, a concentration of commercial activities, restaurants and nightspots, hotels, downtown residents, and transit accessibility such as the train lines that connect to Diridon Station were crucial foundations for the downtown prior to the coronavirus outbreak and will still serve as a bulwark in the future.
“The San Jose/Silicon Valley region is one of the most resilient and innovative economies in the world,” according to an assessment in the report that summarized the views of key stakeholders who were interviewed for the report. “The expectation is that the region will bounce back stronger. It’s a part of the country that has led the economy out of recessions in the past.”
Not nearly as certain are the prospects for downtown San Jose, according to the report.
It’s crucial, the report urged, that downtown San Jose continues to be promoted and positioned as the urban center of Silicon Valley. The report also noted that downtown San Jose isn’t the kind of urban core that one would normally anticipate for the nation’s 10th-largest city.
“Commensurate with what would be expected for a city of its size, downtown San Jose hasn’t naturally drawn people in the past,” the report stated. “Downtown is still searching for an identity and a new magnetism, its own ‘thing’.”
San Jose is still deemed to be an “unfinished city,” in the view of some respondents interviewed for the study, the report stated.
Experts point to several ongoing development efforts that will bolster downtown San Jose:
— Google is planning a huge mixed-use neighborhood of offices, shops, restaurants, homes, hotels, cultural hubs, and entertainment centers near the Diridon train station and SAP Center called Downtown West
— Adobe is constructing a new office tower to dramatically expanding its current three-building downtown headquarters campus.
— Developers Jay Paul, Urban Catalyst, Boston Properties, J.P. DiNapoli, Sobrato Organization, and the venture of Gary Dillabough and Westbank are all constructing or actively planning major new office projects.
“People will return to downtown San Jose,” Knies said. “Downtown will be in a stronger position because of all those advantages that existed prior to the March shutdowns.”
