The bare dirt at El Paseo de Saratoga is finally giving way to concrete and steel. Heavy equipment and cranes are now reshaping the long-planned West San Jose site, and after months of demolition and excavation, the first towers and retail boxes are poking above the fence line along Saratoga Avenue.
Groundbreaking Ushers In Vertical Work
Yesterday, the Silicon Valley Business Journal reported that Sand Hill Property Company and city officials held a ceremonial groundbreaking and that crews are now shifting from excavation into above-ground construction, marking the project’s official move into its vertical phase. City planning records list the master-plan parcel at about 10.76 acres and detail the permits and amendments that cleared the development to proceed.
What’s Being Built
Sand Hill, working with Holland Partners and Sunrise Senior Living, is putting up a mixed-use urban village that will combine apartments, a senior care facility and ground-floor retail, with a proposed Whole Foods box store in the mix, according to SF YIMBY. The current program calls for roughly 772 apartments and a 263-bed assisted-living building. The tallest residential tower is planned at 12 stories with about 398 homes and roughly 14,000 square feet of retail space.
The layout also threads in public plazas, paseos and about 3.5 acres of open space, intended to link the new buildings back to Saratoga Avenue instead of leaving them as an isolated island of density in a sea of parking lots.
Affordable Housing And Pushback
The project won approval in a scaled-down form late in 2024 after the developer agreed to pay about $13.9 million to reduce on-site affordable units, leaving roughly 38 affordable homes, a change that drew sharp criticism from housing advocates and former city officials. “There was so much effort, blood, sweat and tears that went into the plan, and then it went away,” former Vice Mayor Chappie Jones told San José Spotlight during the council discussion.
Timeline And Neighborhood Impacts
Demolition and site clearing have been underway for months, but construction-watchers say the above-ground phase is the part that will really test patience. SF YIMBY reports the developer expects a multi-year buildout that could stretch roughly four years from groundbreaking to full completion.
Local residents and transit advocates have raised familiar alarms about traffic, parking and the need for stronger bus service along Saratoga Avenue and Lawrence Expressway as the site fills in. Those concerns date back to earlier approval hearings and neighborhood debates over how much new housing and retail the area can handle without major transportation upgrades.
