Proposed six-story West San Jose hotel sparks controversy

A proposed six-story hotel within West San Jose’s Winchester Boulevard Urban Village Plan has some residents hoping for an early checkout.

The 119-room hotel at 1212 South Winchester Boulevard would be the first tall building allowed under the plan’s new density focus, the Mercury News reported. While the developer, San Jose dentist Dr. Adam Askari, says it complies with city policies for the area, a group of residents says it “completely violates” the city’s development plan.

The Winchester Boulevard Urban Village Plan, approved by the San Jose City Council in 2017, maps out a shift toward denser development along a 1.5-mile stretch of Winchester Boulevard between I-280 and Impala Drive.

The property, which houses two single-story buildings that would be torn down, is about 1.5 miles south of Santana Row and the same distance north of downtown Campbell. The developer says the hotel would provide a “necessary service for existing and future demand for business travelers and visitors.”

Critics have submitted concerns about a number of issues including an increased chance of fire and potential danger to pedestrians and bicyclists.

The plan has been approved by city planners, but it still needs approval from the City Council, which will discuss it on Jan. 11.

Councilmember Chappie Jones, who represents the neighborhood of the proposed hotel, said that although doesn’t support it, he could be persuaded.

“If you look at the scale of what is being proposed, it just overwhelms the neighborhood and surrounding homes,” Jones said in a recent interview. “So, I have some real reservations about a hotel of that size going in on that parcel.”

Askari said he has followed the urban village plan and has invested at least $2 million.

“If they kill our project, they might as well kill the whole urban village,” he told the Mercury News. “If the City Council in 2017 approved an urban village and we followed that vision, yet here they are changing their mind, no developer is going to want to come in and buy a property in an urban village. It would scare all the developers.”

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