B3 Commercial invokes builder’s remedy for San Jose apartments

B3 Commercial wants to replace a former Planned Parenthood medical clinic in east San Jose with an eight-story apartment complex, employing the state builder’s remedy for approval.

The Newport Beach-based developer led by Cindy Hien Tran has filed plans to raze the vacant 13,300-square-foot medical clinic and build a 138-unit complex at 2470 Alvin Avenue, in Evergreen, the San Jose Mercury News reported.

Plans for the 1-acre project call for an 85-foot-tall building with 24 studios, 83 one-bedroom, 26 two-bedroom and five three-bedroom apartments, atop 5,000 square feet of shops. Some 20 percent of its 138 apartments, or 28 units, would be affordable.

The U-shaped, trapezoid complex, designed by Studio Current, would include floor-to-ceiling windows on its ground floor, with vertical windows in the apartments above, according to a rendering. 

The white and brown building would have a small corner rooftop deck carved out of the eighth floor.

Michaelle Williams, a representative of locally based Studio Current, said the project aims to enter the building permit and construction phase between 2026 and 2027.

The building would replace a one-story medical office building that once housed Planned Parenthood, which moved to a new location several months ago.

Although the project doesn’t meet planning and zoning guidelines, the city is allowing it to move forward because the developer has invoked the builder’s remedy.

The remedy, a recently invoked provision in state housing law, allows builders to bypass local zoning rules in cities that failed to certify their required housing plans, as long as at least 20 percent of the units were affordable.

B3 was founded in 2021 in Palmdale, according to state business records. Tran, its CEO, lives in Las Vegas.

The developer submitted its preliminary application for the project on June 14 last year — six days before the city claimed it was in “substantial compliance” with its Housing Element, the state-mandated blueprint for 62,200 homes by 2031. 

The city’s final certification was in January, shutting the door on a stampede of builder’s remedy projects.

San Jose also has told developers it will not process projects for preliminary applications under the builder’s remedy submitted after June 20, 2023, according to the Mercury News. But it remains to be seen if the city will ultimately sign off on B3’s proposed apartment project.

Jason Lee, a project manager in the Planning Department, said the city is now questioning whether preliminary applications vest the builder’s remedy.

“While the city has provided a path forward for these projects to be reviewed,” Lee said, “it is ultimately uncertain if and how these projects will move forward.”

The development was opposed by neighbors at a recent community meeting for being too tall for the neighborhood, for bringing in too much traffic, and for not including enough affordable homes.

Although B3 wants to include 20 percent of its apartment units as affordable housing, the community commercial zoning for the neighborhood normally requires residential developments to be 100 percent affordable, according to the newspaper.

“Our families don’t have a hundred-and-something thousand dollars in income,” said resident Charlotte Kimble. “A lot of our families are way below the poverty line so how would they qualify?”

In June, B3 Commercial and Buchanan Capital Partners bought a former AT&T call center in Austin, Texas, then converted it into medical condos. 

— Dana Bartholomew

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