Google downtown San Jose village launches this month with demolitions

SAN JOSE — In the most tangible sign to date of the coming transformation of downtown San Jose, Google will begin this month the first building demolitions ahead of the tech titan’s new urban village – yet has rescued a beloved “dancing pig” sign as the game-changing development gets underway.

The Stephen’s Meat Products sign — which features a dancing pig — near the Diridon train station was relocated on Thursday and was being kept safe until it is re-lighted at San Jose’s History Park. Eventually, it will be preserved as a permanent part of Google’s neighborhood, which is called Downtown West.

To be sure, the salvage and preservation of the familiar sign is a very visible move to mark the start of Google’s proposed mixed-use neighborhood. Even so, other crucial endeavors begin this month to signal the start of the development.

Google sketched out a demolition timetable that begins in mid-October and ends fewer than four months later, sometime in January 2023, information that the search giant provided to this news organization shows.

“This is a transformational moment for our city,” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said in an interview with this news organization at the Downtown West site on Thursday. “What Google is launching today will be transformational for our city for decades.”

Once complete, the search giant’s new neighborhood will bring as many as 25,000 Google jobs, millions of square feet of new office space and thousands of homes, with hundreds of those being affordable residences, to a currently quiet section of downtown San Jose.

“We remain focused on the site preparation and infrastructure improvements needed to support the development of the Downtown West project,” said Sheela Jivan, a Google spokesperson.

On Oct. 17, demolition is slated to begin at four locations and multiple buildings on South Montgomery Street and the adjacent Otterson Street. The work will be completed by no later than the end of January, according to Google’s information.

“The site is rich with history and part of this work is the careful management of historic resources, including Stephen’s Meat ‘Dancing Pig’ sign,” Jivan said.

The well-known sign is slated to reappear within the next several weeks at San Jose’s History Park on Phelan Avenue. The sign will be re-lighted at the history center in Kelley Park. Eventually, a few years from now, the sign is expected to return to the Downtown West neighborhood.

“The Dancing Pig is not being made a refuge by this development,” Liccardo said. “The pig will dance again.”

The buildings that will be demolished have addresses of 140, 145 and 102 S. Montgomery St. and 327 Otterson St.

The properties slated to be bulldozed are known as the Sunlite Bakery Bread Depot, the former Patty’s Inn drinking establishment and an old Airgas store. A building next to the Airgas outlet is also headed for demolition.

In a further sign that Google will preserve some key components of the development, the company aims to use the Art Moderne-style entrance of the old bakery building somewhere in the transit village project.

The tech titan also will rescue other key historic elements in the Downtown West footprint, including parts of an old foundry near the SAP Center. The company says that it expects to break ground on the project in 2023.

The mixed-use neighborhood is slated to accommodate up to 7.3 million square feet of offices, 4,000 residential units, 500,000 square feet of retail space that would include shops and restaurants, 300 hotel rooms and 15 acres of open space. Google is expected to employ up to 25,000 people in the transit village when the neighborhood is fully developed.

The impact of the Downtown West project could be beyond dramatic for downtown San Jose, predicted Mark Ritchie, president of Ritchie Commercial, a real estate firm.

“Google’s development will be the biggest thing to happen to any central business district in the United States,” Ritchie said. “It will nearly double the amount of office space that now exists in downtown San Jose.”

The tech company has engaged in “thousands of touchpoints” with the community, which has resulted in feedback that Google describes as very positive and useful.

In May 2022, Google completed an early payment of $7.5 million in a community benefits payment made to the city of San Jose. The company will pay the rest of the public benefits as the Downtown West development proceeds. All told, the community benefits package totals $200 million.

“We look forward to continuing our work with the city and community as we make progress,” Google spokesperson Jivan said.