Chip City of San Jose Reaches Out for Travelers
This capital city of Silicon Valley is reaching beyond the microchip of high technology to create a destination for world travelers.
When visionary Mayor Tom McEnery told us that a freshwater river for canoeing would be created as part of the downtown renaissance, we had a feeling that high tech was reaching into the realm of science fiction.
The waterway will follow the historic channel of the Guadalupe River, along which settlers under the leadership of the Spanish conquistadores founded Pueblo de San Jose de Guadalupe in 1777.
The new Guadalupe River Park, flanking three miles of the river, will contain two museums designed as “playgrounds of the mind.”
“The ideas for our new downtown development,” McEnery says, “stem from what has been achieved by the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, the most creative people since the Renaissance.”
$110-Million Centerpiece
A $110-million centerpiece for the new downtown is scheduled to be completed in October. It is already creating the illusion that one of the most historic hotels on Nob Hill in San Francisco has been transported 50 miles south to San Jose, at the southern tip of San Francisco Bay, by some kind of microchip magic.
The Swig family, owners and operators of the Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill, became enthusiastic enough about the future of San Jose to invest that $110 million in another super-luxury Fairmont.
At one tip of Plaza Park, Hilton has demonstrated its faith in the city by restoring and expanding the elegant St. Claire Hotel of the 1920s. Above the other outreach of the small park is the San Jose Museum of Art.
Across the park from the Fairmont is Civic Auditorium, which is next to the graciously refurbished Holiday Inn. The inn is separated by Almaden Boulevard from the Center for the Performing Arts in the new Guadalupe River Park.
On 1st Avenue, Hyatt San Jose is offering 474 garden rooms around its pool, sauna and exercise track, with dining sought out by local gourmets in its Hugo’s restaurant. Nearby, on North 1st Avenue, Le Baron Hotel offers water beds to its customers.
The 2,700-seat Center for the Performing Arts, designed by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, and the Repertory Theater in Guadalupe River Park are facilities already in use, sharing talents with the top-quality operatic and repertory performances at the Montgomery Theater.
San Jose has a Grand Opera Company, a 50-year-old light opera company and a 100-year-old symphony, California’s oldest. Theatrical and dance companies present a variety of choices for all tastes and moods, with small theaters to counterpoint the Broadway productions that perform here regularly.
Congress has authorized the Army Corps of Engineers, in cooperation with the Santa Clara Valley Water District, to take the first steps in preparing Guadalupe River for its fantasy rebirth. This will be a $43-million flood-control project with dramatic spinoffs for recreation and wildlife preservation.
Historically, the Guadalupe has often become a trickle in summer and sometimes posed serious flood threats after winter rains and runoffs. Now the plan is to divert the old channel underground and replace it with a delightful waterway fed by reservoirs of fresh water. Initial completion date is 1992. The Corps of Engineers will design space for 14 acres of a wildlife sanctuary along with picnic areas, walking and biking paths, and paddle-boat launching facilities.
San Jose’s transformation has been dramatic--from a quiet agricultural town of the 1930s and ‘40s to a burgeoning city built on the semiconductor and electronics industry of Silicon Valley.
‘City of Opportunity’
It has spread from north in Santa Clara Valley to south of San Jose, virtually surrounding this new kind of capital city with the greatest concentration of high-tech companies in the nation--more that 2,500.
A recent projection is that San Jose and its environs will be “one of the 10 U.S. cities of opportunity through the end of this century.” Steve Wozniak, a founder of Apple Computer, primed the fund drive for the proposed Technology Center with a contribution of $400,000.
San Jose State University, which offers many cultural events to draw visitors to its campus, has a student body of more than 28,000, many of whom go on to work in the high-tech industries.
Focus on the new San Jose also helps to spotlight the city’s longtime attractions. The Great American Arts Festival, July 4-5, has become a multicultural extravaganza with continuous live entertainment on 10 stages. It is expected to draw more than 400,000 this year.
From April through October, the city’s German, Greek, Italian, Scottish, Mexican and Japanese communities showcase their heritages with presentations of music, dance, foods, arts and crafts.
The 1,800-booth San Jose Flea Market has been described by Time magazine as “one of the biggest in the United States.” It attracts some 2.5 million people annually.
We found that a three-block walk around Plaza Park took us to Peralta Adobe, tucked away in a small park dedicated during the city’s bicentennial in 1977. The adobe, in a garden behind wrought-iron gates, was built about 1804. Push-button activated voice recordings describe life in the early 19th Century.
Close to downtown, serene paths wind through Kelley Park’s 150 acres of woodlands and small lakes. At the south end of the park, the San Jose Historical Museum presents an overview of the centuries that preceded the Silicon Valley era.
From there, a train ride on the small-scale model of the old South Pacific Coast Railroad will take you to the Japanese Friendship Garden, created with the cooperation of San Jose’s sister city, Okayama, Japan. The train goes on to Happy Hollow Park and Zoo for preteens.
San Jose’s 37-acre Overfelt Botanical Garden is a short drive from Kelley Park. There, a statue of Confucius presides over a small park in the tranquil Chinese Garden.
The Municipal Rose Garden on Naglee Avenue has more than 150 varieties of roses. Only a block away, a sphinx and obelisk are among thousands of rare artifacts in the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum.
The Winchester Mystery House has remained a top visitor attraction. This other-world Victorian mansion of 160 rooms was under construction day and night from 1884 to 1922, supervised by Sarah Winchester, reclusive widow of the rifle heir. Dedicated to the occult, she surrounded ceilings, walls and 10,000 windows with mystifying concepts. The house is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Other local attractions are the World of Miniature Museum and Villa Montalvo estate, the latter bequeathed to the public by the late California state Sen. James Phelan. Its beautifully landscaped grounds and nature trails provide a setting for a theater and exhibits by contemporary artists.
Accommodations for a weekend or vacation stay to explore the past, present and future of San Jose include hideaway inns priced as low as $30. For a complete listing of where to stay and what to do, ask for the new Visitor Packet from the San Jose Convention and Visitors Bureau, P.O. Box 6299, San Jose, Calif. 95150; phone (408) 295-9600.
