SJ Flea Market owners use builder's remedy to avert “infeasible” office project

Image by BlueWaikiki on Flickr

The Silicon Valley Business Journal reports that the Bumb family has filed to remove the office space portion of their Flea Market development (leaving only residential/retail space), via the '80s-established “builder's remedy” provision. The Bumbs' consultant cites SJ's struggling office market. While CM Cohen thinks the Bumbs did the “right thing,” Mayor Mahan calls this emergent downsizing/downzoning pattern a “perversion of state law.”

The Bumb family, the longtime owners of the flea market and the land next to the Berryessa/North San Jose BART station, now plan to build 940 homes and 45,500 square feet of ground-floor retail space on the site, according to a proposal submitted to the city on Tuesday.

The move comes two years after the San Jose City Council rezoned the property, which is located at 1590 Berryessa Rd., to accommodate the family's prior development plan. Under that plan, dubbed Market Park, the Bumbs envisioned building as many as 3,450 homes and as much as 3.4 million square feet of office space on the 61.5-acre site and to set aside five acres for an updated market.

Erik Schoennauer, a land-use consultant and representative of the Bumb family on the project, did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the new proposal, which the family submitted under the so-called builder's remedy, a provision in state law that streamlines the approval process for certain residential projects. But in an emailed statement to The Mercury News, Schoennauer said that over the last six years, the office portion of the project had attracted "no interest" at all from any kinds of prospective tenants.

"As currently approved, the Market Park development is proving infeasible to build," Schoennauer said.

To take advantage of the builder's remedy, residential projects have to set aside at least 20% of their homes for affordable housing. It was not clear from the new proposal how much housing the family would reserve for lower-income residents.

Two years ago, when the City Council was considering the rezoning proposal, Schoennauer estimated that some 420 individual vendors were operating at the flea market. Under the Bumb's prior plans for the site, the amount of space set aside for vendors would have shrunk by more than two-thirds from the present frea market. That provision proved controversial, with vendors raising concerns that many of them would be put out of business and wouldn't have a home in the new market space.

To address such concerns, the Bumb family agreed to provide $5 million to establish a fund to help vendors relocate. The family also promised to provide vendors at least a one-year written notice before any planned closure, suspension of operation or relocation of the flea market.

This article originally appeared in the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Read the whole thing here.

Related:

• Housing experts: Mere threat of “builder's remedy” fast-tracks affordable housing development

• Housing law expert: San Jose CMs bite their nails over “builder's remedy”—for nothing

• A deregulated housing market opens the door for local privatized mass transportation systems that are proven to work

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