Here is a twist: The San Jose community-at-large is a partner with Google in designing a new 80 acre campus in Downtown San Jose, CA. And, instead of getting incentives from San Jose, Google is paying $200 million to the community in addition to putting up $1 billion for 20,000 housing units in the Bay Area.
It started out more like Lot J but Google changed gears and fully incorporated the community in its plans. Notably, political leaders were pushed to the side lines and mostly ratified what the community and Google agreed to.
The final plan isn't a typical corporate campus but a development that is more like a town center that invites the community in to mingle with office workers.
Lessons for Jax?
Quote...Last month, the San Jose City Council approved Google's plan for a mixed-use megacampus that spans 80 acres and 7.3 million square feet of office space in the heart of California's third-largest city. To win over critics, Google designated more than half of its campus to public use and offered up a $200 million community benefits package that includes displacement funds, job placement training, and power for community leaders to influence how it's spent.
"It's certainly a much different process in the end versus what we saw at the beginning with regards to community and labor movement," said Jeffrey Buchanan, director of public policy for San Jose-based community coalition Working Partnerships USA.
"It was a reminder of how organizing works and matters," said nonprofit Silicon Valley Rising director Maria Noel Fernandez. "Now, it really does feel like a partnership."...
...It began when the campus plan appeared cloaked in secrecy at a time just as the conversation around tech power and antitrust was beginning to gain traction in the broader world. To the local community, it appeared that Google and the city were secretly plotting to give the company public land without much discussion with the community....
...In 2019, Google put together a diverse cohort of community liaisons to talk with local residents, listen to their concerns and highlight their stories. Community members said these open-door conversations eventually led to them having a seat at the table when it came to decisions....
....These liaisons became trusted members of the community who listened to concerns and followed up, residents said.
"They put together a team of folks who were really interested in working more closely as a community — as partners," said Buchanan. "As the team came together, you saw the relationship with Silicon Valley coalitions, the complexion of the conversation changed over time."...
....By 2021, the company had conducted more than 100 listening sessions, and its plans were beginning to sihft. It updated renderings of the space to reflect a warm, inviting open space where workers, residents kids and artists could walk among each other, eat together or shop together. That was a stark contrast to the first renderings, which displayed cold, basic high-rise buildings overlooking the rest of the region while young, hip tech workers walked around.
"Thousands of conversations helped us hone in to what we really want in a site, which was much less the corporate campus and the financial district and much more a resilient neighborhood," said Alexa Arena, Google's district lead for San Jose in a Oct. 2020 video....
....The biggest win for community organizers is gaining decision-making power over how community dollars are designated and disbursed. The final agreement included the establishment of a 13-member advisory committee that must include five members with lived experiences from the community.
"The decision power isn't going to sit in city hall or elected politicians but with the community and be intentional about the power imbalances for those who experience them," Buchanan said....
....Buchanan said since the approval, organizations like Amazon and Major League Baseball's Oakland Athletics have reach out for advice on how they can connect with neighboring communities given the success of the Google partnership....
....While some critics still remain, organizers say the project has created a positive pathway for future organizing on real estate projects and more. Cohen added that she thinks the conversations have gone so well that she sees it continuing after the project finalization....
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/27/how-google-won-over-biggest-critics-of-san-jose-megacampus.html
(https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/106888207-1621975565062DowntownWest-San-Fernando-Credit-Google-jpg?v=1621975620&w=740&h=416)
Interesting... I will watch this closely as I lived in San Jose on the west side near downtown for eight years...
Feels like worse than a stretch to try to connect the 2.
Quote from: bl8jaxnative on June 28, 2021, 03:10:33 PM
Feels like worse than a stretch to try to connect the 2.
The comparison is about the planning process, not directly comparing the projects or their scale. The example set is one of full transparency, community inputs and the absence of political favors with the Google project vs. non-disclosed details, behind the scenes deal making and no community input with Lot J. The good news is the Jaguars' current process has implemented some lessons learned. While not quite where the Google project is on all these criteria, it has moved much closer to it and away from the Lot J process.
The other point is that the Google process should be more regularly emulated in communities, wherever they are, and with respect to any project that has a significant impact on its location. So, whether Downtown, in San Marco, Springfield, Riverside, NW Quadrant, Westside, Arlington, Beaches, Mandarin, etc., all of which at one time or another have faced controversial projects, the idea of trying harder to bring opposing sides together by increasing transparency and community dialogue/input to hammer out a satisfactory compromise should be considered.
Sometimes, believe it or not, the local community may know better what sustains success for a development than a remotely based developer and, as such, developers would benefit from such inputs more. By example, had the Landing developer better understood the habits of Downtown workers and visitors (and, now, residents), maybe the Landing would have been designed differently and still be thriving. The same for the Skyway and much of what has failed in the Downtown core.
It's never too late to change course and Jacksonville should do so as the current government/developer cram-down approach has not been working well.
No one can look at the ridiculously high prices, high even by San Jose standards, Google is paying the city of San Jose and not smell a rat. They're pay twice the market rate for that land. 20% is a premium. Twice is a bribe.
Keep in mind most of the land for this proposed project hasn't been purchased yet. The city maybe has 20 acres and Google is talking 80. A lot of folks in it's crosshairs are afraid the city will drum up reasons to invoke eminent domain to force them out.
That doesn't look very friendly IMHO. It looks like a bully pushing around it's weight.
Has the exact area been defined yet?
Quote from: bl8jaxnative on June 29, 2021, 10:35:15 AM
No one can look at the ridiculously high prices, high even by San Jose standards, Google is paying the city of San Jose and not smell a rat. They're pay twice the market rate for that land. 20% is a premium. Twice is a bribe.
Keep in mind most of the land for this proposed project hasn't been purchased yet. The city maybe has 20 acres and Google is talking 80. A lot of folks in it's crosshairs are afraid the city will drum up reasons to invoke eminent domain to force them out.
That doesn't look very friendly IMHO. It looks like a bully pushing around it's weight.
None of this info was mentioned in the posted article so please add your source.
I will say, is it better to have Google "bribe" the City by paying it "twice the market" or, like here, for the City to "bribe" the developer by offering tens and hundreds of millions in incentives and giveaways? Quite a swing in outcomes.