Latest SSV Newsletter (Thursday, April 19): SJSU says no; Plan B on tap

Good find FUAEG. I listened to the presentation. Nothing earth-shattering, but, there were a couple of interesting tidbits.
1) Even though SJSU is now out of the picture, the city is still willing to pursue the I-Star conversion request as a way to fund a stadium somewhere else in the city. Krutko did not identify any sites though. Krutko seemed confident that they could transfer to other areas of Edenvale or New Edenvale the industrial zoning that would be lost with the I-Star conversion, (and come out of it with a new stadium to boot).

2) It looks like they still plan on putting in a regional soccer complex as part of the South Campus Master plan.

3) Krutko emphasized Lew Wolff's continued determination to get a stadium built in San Jose, and pointed out Wolff's ability to get other major projects completed in the city.

4) Krutko started the presentation with a little bit of the history of the Quakes leaving, and Lew coming onto the scene, and mentioned how a non-binding agreement between the city and MLS to pursue a new team here helped secure the history and colors of the Quakes for a future team. He mentioned that he worked for the city of Cleveland at the time they were able to secure the Browns legacy and said how important that was to the fans of the team.

5) LA sucks (ok, I threw that one in).

The impression that I got was that the city is bullish on getting a stadium built and I am cautiously optimistic it will happen.

 

Thanks for the synopsis, GS. My conclusion: Sounds like Paul Krutko would like to see this thing happen, which makes sense since he's "Director of Economic Development" and this is an economic development opportunity for San Jose.

 

Krutko sounds like a pretty competent guy too. He seemed very positive which was somewhat surprising since the SJSU/Earthquakes deal had just fallen apart. That didn't seem to phase him much at all.

 

Yeah, and the MN dragged him through the mud over the rezoning issue because he said something like "Trust us on this one". They had a field day with that. It's not like he was saying, "Trust us while we make a back room deal!" There will be plenty of time for public debate if a proposal is put on the table.

 

Yeah, but, he got his shots in on the Merc. I think a couple of times in the presentation he said something to the effect of, "unlike what the media may have reported".

 

I agree with your view of the situation and Paul Krutko. The guy has a job to do and I would expect him to be very excited about this opportunity, especially since it isn't very often that something comes along that really has such little risk to the city.

What I am hoping to see is the MN licking some egg off it's face when the pieces are all together. I think the Wolff proposal of re-zoning the Edenvale land is not going to be all that difficult to work out. I mentioned this several weeks ago, but one of the obvious solutions to the issue of the residential/industrial land ratio is to create some sort of trade off. When the IStar land is rezoned from industrial to residential, the city needs to rezone existing residential land to industrial use. It seems simple enough, which is probably why it isn't. This part of the whole proposal can be worked out by reasonably intelligent people.

 

That has been the plan all along, and Krutko reiterated in the presentation. Not only would the city be preserving industrial land, but as Krutko pointed out, they would be gaining a stadium in the process.

 

That's not quite the plan.

Krutko is planning to make up for the lost industrial land by increasing the industrial density elsewhere in Old Edenvale. Apparently the land owners are already asking to do that there (it's currently not zoned that densely) and follow a model that similar for the proposals to intensify the density along the North First street corridor in North San Jose.

He mentioned this on the audio.

I think this is the difference between one story tilt ups and multi-story industrial / mixed development.

 

Should we make a visit to the Council on the May8th? It can't hurt to have people in the crowd wearing EQ blue.

 

I will defer to SSV on organizing a political show of force.

However in general I think it's a good idea to occasionally attend a city council meeting. Nothing like seeing local government at work to make one a strong Federalist.