San Jose — Construction crews have begun the early stages of a multi-month effort to demolish buildings and clear the site for Phase 1 of Google’s innovative downtown San Jose Transit Village.
Initial excavation and demolition of interior buildings began on Monday at the site on South Montgomery Street and adjacent Otterson Street near the Diridon train station and SAP Center in downtown San Jose, with work continuing on Tuesday.
The demolition and site clearing should be completed by the end of January at the latest, according to information Google provided to the Bay Area News Group.
Google plans to break ground on Downtown West, a mixed-use district in San Jose, in 2023, the search giant announced earlier this month.
Offices, homes, stores, and stores are included in the Downtown West district, where Google can employ up to 25,000 technicians.
Tech giants install a range of infrastructure, including power equipment, prior to construction of new office buildings.
Earlier this week, construction workers were using machinery to excavate at multiple locations at 81 South Montgomery Street.
The work was done in the parking lot where the iconic Steven’s Meat Products (home of the famous local Dancing Pig sign) was demolished and trucked in on October 6th. Permanently stored and prominently displayed.
Inside the former Sunlight Baking Company building, a pile of rubble consisting of what appeared to be metal, tubes and ducts was visible on Tuesday.
Construction workers said work needs to be completed inside the slated for demolition before bulldozing the structure begins in earnest.
Four buildings are scheduled to be demolished before work is completed in the coming months.
The addresses of the buildings to be demolished are 140, 145, and 102 S. Montgomery St.and 327 Otterson Street
These establishments are known as the Sunlight Bakery Bread Depot, the former Patty’s Inn Tavern, and the old Airgas Store. The building next to the airgas outlet is also headed for demolition.
In a further sign that Google will retain some key components of the development, the company said it aims to use the modern-style entrance of an old bakery building somewhere in the Transit Village project.
The Downtown West district includes up to 7.3 million square feet of offices, 4,000 residential units, 500,000 square feet of retail space including shops and restaurants, 300 hotel rooms and 15 acres of open space.
In May 2022, Google completed an early payment of $7.5 million in community benefits to the City of San Jose. As Downtown West develops, the company will cover the rest of the utility. Overall, the community benefit package totals $200 million.
As a reminder of the long-term effort behind the Downtown West project, it was almost six years ago in December 2016 that Google purchased the first property needed for the development. That first purchase was an old bakery building just south of the Dancing Pig sign site.
Google has spent at least $500 million to buy dozens of properties it needs in its Downtown West district. The acquisition took place in one fell swoop from December 2016 to March 2020.
Using the official purchase prices of recorded transactions and combining those amounts with the estimated purchases Google made to purchase real estate near the historic San Jose Water Co. building in the Delmas Avenue area, Google spent an estimated $531.7 million to purchase Downtown West. future site.