Patience has paid off in San Jose, California,

Patience has paid off in San Jose, California, where two development projects are completed in the Jackson-Taylor neighborhood and a third is under construction. The city adopted Calthorpe Associates’ specific plan and design guidelines for the area in 1992, but the recession put a stop to implementation of the plan. According to Laurel Prevetti, a principal planner with the city, the current projects follow Calthorpe’s guidelines. One completed mixed-use, mixed-income building complex includes 108 apartments and 12,000 square feet of ground-level retail, and the other has 232 residential units and 3,600 square feet of retail. In accordance with the city’s long-term plan, growth in new development will be incremental and will be carried out by a number of different developers, Prevetti says. Patrick Siegman, a new urbanist planner from Palo Alto, notes that the first projects in Jackson-Taylor represent a dramatic change from other new development in the Silicon Valley.