Map: Developers zero in on Santa Clara with dozens of proposals

It would be an understatement to say that Santa Clara city planners are busy.

The South Bay city is fielding some of the largest development proposals in Silicon Valley as city officials work on no less than four separate plans that will guide dense growth in various parts of the city. That’s a feat as the southernmost part of the Bay Area attracts some of the largest tech titans and most prolific developers for the first time.

And the city of Santa Clara, tucked next to the largest Bay Area city on one side and Apple’s hometown of Cupertino on another, is reaping the benefits.

“In terms of total economic development, this is more than we’ve seen over a similar number of years in the past,” said Andrew Crabtree, Santa Clara’s director for community development, in a recent interview. “But this has been sort of business as usual for the last few years since we came out of the economic downturn in 2009 to 2011.”

Throughout the city, more than 65 development projects have been proposed, approved, are under construction or recently completed, according to Santa Clara data. That tallies up to more than 14 million square feet of office, 2.3 million square feet of retail, 2,000 hotel rooms and as many as 20,000 homes in the pipeline across the 18.4 square mile municipality. San José Spotlight created this new interactive map to track the developments with descriptions, photos and other details.

The data shows the city is seeing significant growth in areas where officials have already laid out high-density plans for development. Near the Lawrence Station Caltrain stop, for instance, major developments like SummerHill’s 988-apartment Nuevo project is rising not far from a new five-story, 177,134-square-foot office building by Bayview Development Group.

About five miles away, in an area known as Tasman East, nearly 3,500 new residential units have been proposed (and another 500 approved) from half a dozen different developers.

Meanwhile, the city is kickstarting a revitalization of its once vibrant downtown, reimagining its car-central El Camino Real and drawing up comprehensive development guides, known as specific plans, for the city’s north side as well as an area called Patrick Henry, where Chinese developer Kylli is working on a major mixed-use project that will be updated around the end of this year.

“As a planner I think of everything in terms of our general plan where we comprehensively try to look at quality-of-life issues and everything from the parks we are providing, to the services,” Crabtree said. “We aren’t growing for the sake of adding money to the city’s tax base, we are growing in an area where there’s demand to grow.”

Notably, not every proposed project will come to fruition. Each one would need to gain city approval, secure permits, find funding and sometimes even lock in tenants before a developer would break ground — each step a feat for developers in the region.

But the proposals demonstrate a strong interest from developers and investors, even as the Bay Area enters into an unprecedented decade of economic growth and market experts speculate how long the region has before a slow down.

Click through our interactive map to learn more about the projects coming to Santa Clara, a fast-growing city home to nearly 130,000 people, an NFL stadium, iconic amusement park and some very busy city planners.

Contact Janice Bitters at [email protected] or follow @JaniceBitters on Twitter.