SAN JOSE — Santa Clara County’s adoption of its own blueprint for future housing development gives a big boost to a fledgling concept that could replace a San Jose golf course with thousands of homes.
The prospect for wide-ranging housing development and other uses such as retail and open spaces — effectively a new neighborhood — is being contemplated at the long-shuttered Pleasant Hills Golf Course site in east San Jose.
Santa Clara County in recent days adopted a housing element for the years 2023 through 2031.
California’s quest to spur the creation of more residences throughout the state has obliged numerous local agencies to pass housing elements — a bureaucratic term for blueprints that local jurisdictions must craft for residential development within their borders.
Tucked away in the county’s recent approval is a declaration that the site of the defunct golf course — specifically its 117 fallow acres — looks like an excellent location to build new apartments and houses. The golf course is at the northeast corner of South White Road and Tully Road, in the Lake Cunningham area of San Jose.
“The decommissioned Pleasant Hills golf course promises to be one of the most significant sites for residential development within the unincorporated county during the 2023-2031 planning period,” Santa Clara County staffers stated in a document prepared for the Oct. 17 meeting of the Board of Supervisors.
San Jose-based Lakeside Community, an entity whose principal leaders include Bay Area real estate executives Tony Arreola and Mark Lazzarini, is behind the idea to rezone the golf course property so it could accommodate the development of potentially thousands of residences.
It’s possible that 2,480 to 3,991 residences could be developed on the golf course site, which has addresses of 2050 and 2079 South White Road, according to estimates contained in the county staff report.
The county approved its housing element goals due to mandates imposed by California state officials.
San Jose has yet to win state approval for its own separate housing element program. The state’s mandates have placed pressure on numerous local governments to submit their own housing strategies that can pass muster with California.
“The housing production goals set by the state are aggressive, but Tuesday’s approval of the 2023-2031 housing element shows leadership and commitment from our county’s Board of Supervisors and planning staff to provide needed housing for our local families,” said Arreola, a partner with Terrascape Ventures, a real estate investment and development firm.
The development group hopes to convince San Jose to amend its general plan to help launch a formal approval process for a specific housing project on the golf course property.
“The Pleasant Hills site is a great opportunity not only to provide additional housing for Santa Clara county residents, but also to deliver numerous benefits to the site’s surrounding communities, including new retail amenities, jobs, open space, and additional customers for local businesses,” said Lazzarini, a Terrascape Ventures partner.
The golf course site is located on a pocket of county-governed land that’s surrounded on all sides by incorporated areas of San Jose. As such, it’s entirely possible that San Jose at some point will annex the pocket into the city.
County officials also said that there are plenty of benefits to the approach of including this pocket of incorporated county land — and several other similar infill properties — in its housing element.
Among the benefits: County officials could avoid development in bucolic sections of the South Bay, such as prime agricultural lands, by focusing on infill pockets that are already well within a municipality’s city limits.
“Including the Pleasant Hills site means that the county will not be forced to designate rural unincorporated areas as housing sites, thereby avoiding instigating urban-scale development in rural areas,” the county staff report stated.
Building numerous houses in a rural zone contradicts long-standing South Bay development policies, according to the staff report.
County-governed land pockets in the Stanford University area also could help South Bay officials dodge the awkward prospect of shoving developing into rural areas.
“We are very relieved that the county is focusing growth at Stanford, the urban pockets, and Pleasant Hills rather than rural areas and open space,” Jordan Grimes, a resilience manager with Greenbelt Alliance, stated at the county supervisors meeting on Oct. 17.
The developers have begun a process to obtain input from neighbors and other interested parties about the concept of rezoning the golf course land so it could be developed as housing.
“The county’s actions create an opportunity for development of available sites in a reasonable manner,” said Bob Staedler, principal executive with Silicon Valley Synergy, a land-use consultancy. “This allows time for the developers to have constructive discussions with the community.”