SAN JOSE — Major developer PG&E and top San Jose officials are eyeing green residential towers and data centers to pave the best way for innovations that may create green energy downtown.
Westbank, a mega-developer with global reach, has begun discussing proposals with planners in San Jose to construct residential tower and data center projects that will work together to provide green energy for the high-rise residential buildings that might rise in the town Downtown.
These ambitious proposals come at a time when PG&E is engaging with technology corporations and other corporations about how the energy giant can boost the production and delivery of additional and reliable energy sources to strengthen Silicon Valley's economy.
The idea of placing apartments next to data centers that may generate energy, in addition to technology information centers, is becoming certainly one of the components of the grand strategy for a green downtown of San Jose and Silicon Valley, each of that are expected to make use of far more electricity.
“Ultimately, our housing portfolio in downtown San Jose will be over 4,000 units,” Andrew Jacobson, U.S. vice chairman for West Bank, said in an interview with this news organization.
At least two of those projects include a stand-alone data center that will probably be built adjoining to the residential buildings and can provide the homes with excess heat from the technology center that will otherwise be released into the atmosphere.
“Our focus will be primarily on the production of residential buildings and units in downtown San Jose, with a strong focus on the sustainability of these units,” Jacobson said.
San Jose is moving forward with what the town calls the Innovative Project Pathway Program, which makes it easier to construct projects downtown even when the proposed development doesn't quite align with zoning for a site, in accordance with San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan.
“We created the Innovative Project Pathway program to encourage the market to imagine viable projects that will improve the quality of life in San Jose and increase community benefits,” Mayor Mahan said in an interview with this news organization.
San Jose's modern development program is designed to advertise creative, high-density mixed-use residential, office, retail and entertainment projects. In this case, the creative twist is a knowledge center to enhance the green energy elements of the adjoining residential buildings.
“Westbank’s proposal is exciting because it addresses two of our biggest challenges in the same project: housing and energy conservation,” Mahan said. “This can be a net-zero energy project by using the computing power in the data center and then capturing excess heat to use to heat the neighboring high-rise developments.”
Here are the downtown San Jose projects that might put data centers next to residential towers in-built the West Bank:
— Orchard Residential on land often called the Valley Title site. Westbank's current proposal calls for 3 30-story residential towers that will add as much as 1,147 residential units in downtown San Jose's trendy SoFA neighborhood. The addresses are 300 South First Street and 345 South Second Street, with a further frontage on East San Carlos Street.
— Terraine, a 17-story, 345-apartment tower at 323 Terraine Street.
“We are the first major city in the country to commit to being carbon neutral by 2030,” Mahan said. “We are innovative pioneers.”
Coincidentally, PG&E is hosting an event called “PG&E Innovation Summit 2024” in downtown San Jose. PG&E CEO Patricia Poppe, Mayor Mahan and a number of other PG&E executives are among the many speakers on the daylong meeting.
How do data centers fit into this? Data centers require plenty of power to operate and use cooling towers to stop equipment and electronics from overheating. Excess heat is commonly released into the air and wasted.
Experts are on the lookout for ways to utilize the surplus heat from the info center process.
“An underutilized option is reusing waste heat to heat other facilities,” says a post on the Heat Exchanger website.
That's the approach Westbank is considering for the Terraine and Orchard Residential towers in downtown San Jose.
“Our long-term vision is to create multiple data centers and residential clusters. The idea is to connect them all together and create an energy system for the downtown San Jose district,” said Westbank manager Jacobson. “If we can harness low-cost, low-carbon energy, that opens up a huge opportunity for downtown.”
Canada-based Westbank has proposed several projects in downtown San Jose, a vision that originally placed more emphasis on office towers than housing.
Huge demand for housing combined with the collapse of the office market, undermined by the tech industry's slowing demand for jobs, led Westbank to change to residential towers in locations where high-rise office buildings had previously been planned.
“What we need is a thriving downtown San Jose,” Jacobson said. “San Jose has a great downtown. All that is missing is for more people to live in the city center, and on a large scale. We want to promote housing construction. We want to do more than just start a project. We want to get a lot of housing projects off the ground.”
The data centers, in synergy with adjoining residential buildings, would make West Bank's downtown San Jose projects more energy efficient – and a more attractive bet for financing real estate developments.
“We’re very confident in downtown San Jose,” Jacobson said. “It has great infrastructure, fantastic restaurants, bars and entertainment options. What’s missing from downtown San Jose is housing at scale.”
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