Cambrian Village would replace aging strip mall outside San Jose

A New York investment firm has filed plans to turn a 70-year-old strip mall outside west San Jose into a retail village with a hotel and hundreds of homes, shops and restaurants.

Kimco Realty has proposed redeveloping the Cambrian Park Plaza at 14406 Union Avenue in unincorporated Cambrian Park, the Silicon Valley Business Journal reported. The current 171,000-square-foot shopping center would be demolished.

Plans for a new Cambrian Village call for two six-story buildings, and two five-story buildings, with 428 homes and apartments, a 229-room hotel, a seniors complex and 56,000 square feet of retail space.

The only hitch: Approval of the 18-acre project by the city of San Jose would require annexing the property within city limits. Annexation would require separate city and Santa Clara County approvals.

“We are eager to present Cambrian Village to the Planning Commission and [City] Council for approval this summer and create the opportunity for 428 more housing units to help ease the housing crisis in the region,” said Sean Morely, co-founder of Morley Bros., a Los Gatos-based real estate firm that’s helping Kimco secure entitlements on the project.

The Cambrian Park Plaza, built in the 1950s, now includes such tenants as Dollar Tree, BevMo! and Round Table Pizza.

In 2015, Houston-based Weingarten Realty Investors paid $49 million for the aging shopping plaza, and promptly proposed razing it for a mixed-use complex. Kimco, a Long Island, New York-based real estate investment trust, acquired Weingarten last year in a $4 billion deal. The merger grew Kimco’s portfolio to 559 shopping centers totaling 100 million square feet.

During development, Kimco has increased the scope of the proposed Cambrian Village by nearly doubling the residential units, adding to its senior component, and choosing a hotel over offices, while whittling retail space to 57,000 square feet from 87,000 square feet.

Its proposal now includes a 305-unit apartment building around a community plaza, a 229-room hotel facing the central park, and a 110-bed senior assisted living facility with 50 independent living units. Underground parking would serve each building, according to a project website.

The village would also include 48 single-family homes, 25 three-story townhomes and 27 accessory dwelling units. It would include 4 acres of open space, with an amphitheater.

Kimco has agreed to increase the affordable homes to 10 percent of the project’s total, including 57 apartments and ADUs for households who earn 100 percent of the area’s median income.

Reaction from neighbors has been mixed, according to the Business Journal, with some expressing concern about building heights.

Kimco Realty also has proposed adding hundreds of apartments to a shopping center it owns in Daly City.

[Silicon Valley Business Journal] – Dana Bartholomew

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