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Downtown San Jose

Downtown San Jose is the central business district of San Jose, California, United States. The area is generally located north of Interstate 280 and east of Guadalupe Parkway, which roughly parallels Guadalupe River. The region is bound to the north by Highway 101 and to the east by Coyote Creek.

The area was first settled in 1797, when the town of San Jose moved somewhat inland from its original location on the banks of the Guadalupe River. The area was a typical small city downtown until the aggressive expansion of San Jose into surrounding areas led by A. P. Hamann forced city spending to the outlying areas and led to downtown's decline. In the 1980s, mayor Tom McEnery, whose family owned several buildings in downtown, began a program with the San Jose Redevelopment Agency that has spent apprximately $1.7 billion to revitalize the downtown area and surrounding neighborhoods as part of the Strong Neighborhood Initiative program.

The ZIP code for the business district of downtown San Jose is 95113, and the residential area is covered by ZIP code 95112.

Downtown San Jose is noted for its pedestrian-friendly scale, with buildings not exceeding 27 stories in height (City Hall is 18 stories and the Fairmont Hotel are both 17 stories, with planned buildings up to 22-24 stories (Emporis.com)), due to its location near Mineta San Jose International Airport. Despite the height restrictions, the area is home to many of the city's landmarks, including the headquarters of Adobe Systems, BEA Systems, the San Jose Museum of Art, the Tech Museum of Innovation, the Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph, and the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library. HP Pavilion, just west of Guadalupe Parkway, is also normally considered to be "in" downtown.

Downtown is the home of several important network service providers and Internet service providers, many of them located in Market Post Tower. Although the cost of office and technical space is relatively high downtown, this is offset by the low cost of peering and internetworking, an effect of proximity to other networking companies.

Many of the public areas of downtown San Jose are covered by a public, free, Wi-Fi network, including the areas surrounding Plaza de César Chávez and San Pedro Square. Downtown is also the hub of the VTA's light rail system, and the home of the main campus of San Jose State University. Many of the 19th century buildings in central downtown are designated on the National Register of Historic Places, in particular the area surrounding St. James Park.

Downtown San Jose offers the lifestyle necessary to create equity in new high rise living residences, like San Jose Place and Vintage Tower. Business are adopting technology to serve many new residents that are moving in like text message restaurant ordering and curbside pick up.

The residential areas of Downtown San Jose are usually considered to be located in the region of Hedding, Taylor, and Santa Clara Streets. Little of the existing housing was built before 1906 because many of the original structures were destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Downtown San Jose's early 20th century housing is primarily Victorian-style, primarily smaller homes with a few fairly large gingerbread or Italianate-style Victorians in the Naglee Park and Hensley areas. The downtown residential area consisted of primarily Caucasian residents through the mid-twentieth century, but Latinos and Vietnamese Americans now represent a significant percentage of the region's residents since the latter portion of the twentieth century; the Vietnamese-American population forms the largest Vietnamese immigrant population in the United States. Downtown San Jose has a number of lower-class neighborhoods, some neighborhoods have been gentrified, and others have remained middle or upper-class communities; like Naglee Park, Hyde Park and Vendome area neighborhoods.

• San Jose Downtown Association
• San Jose Redevelopment Agency
• National Park Service page about the San Jose Downtown Historic District
• San Jose McEnery Convention Center