VCI Floats Plan for 135-unit Apartment Highrise in San Jose

VCI Companies wants to build two apartment towers connected by a soaring sky bridge in west San Jose.

The locally based developer led by Tianxing Wang has filed preliminary plans to build the 17-story, 135-unit highrise at 826 North Winchester Boulevard, SiliconValley.com reported.

It would replace a vacant office building covered with graffiti north of the Westfield Valley Fair and Santana Row malls. The property was seized in a foreclosure last summer.

Plans by VCI call for an L-shaped tower with 70 one-bedroom and 65 two-bedroom apartments, of which 20 units would be set aside as affordable.

The glass tower, featuring floor-to-ceiling windows trimmed in white, features a massive sky bridge of an undetermined use, according to a rendering.

The project would contain 13,000 square feet of outdoor open space, nearly 6,000 square feet of “outdoor open space within the building,” and 7,500 square feet of undisclosed amenities, according to the preliminary filing.

Two elevated sections would be landscaped with trees.

VCI was set to present the project to the Catalyze SV on Wednesday, Feb. 28. The organization brings community members, developers and political leaders together to fine tune developments.

In June, the lender for the blighted office building on the site, San Jose-based Emerson Vista, seized the property after Kochland, an affiliate controlled by Kenneth Ryan Koch of Grass Valley, defaulted on a $505,000 loan. The developer had planned to replace the building with 137 apartments.

In September, Emerson Vista sold the 0.6-acre property to an affiliate linked to VCI Companies, according to the Mercury News.

The company is not registered under that name with the Secretary of State, according to the state website. Instead, companies led by Tianxing Wang include VCI Estate Holdings, VCI Energy, VCI Sequoia Holding and VCI Winchester Holding.

Tianxing Wang has served as CEO of VCI since May 2018, according to his LinkedIn page. He also serves as head of Valuable Capital Investment, based in San Jose, according to OpenCorporates.

— Dana Bartholomew