City Approves Fancy Parking Garage Despite $6 Mil Premium

SAN JOSE-Despite the lowest bid for the project coming in $6 million above estimates, the San Jose City Council unanimously approved an elaborate downtown parking garage project. Members of the council expressed disappointment with the bids prior to voting, but said they must act now to solve the city’s desperate downtown parking situation.

They also say this isn’t a normal parking garage. The seven-story structure, designed by the international architecture firm Ellerbe Beckett, will have 23,000 sf of ground-level retail space and be topped with a banquet center for use by the San Jose Rotary Club and others.

As a result, in addition to the cost of designing the non-garage spaces, the structure itself has to be built much stronger to eliminate vibrations common to stand-alone garages but not desirable when you’ve got a banquet facility on top of the structure. In addition, five glass elevators and a special metal paneling along Fourth Street to soften the visual impact on residents of the apartment complex across the street added nearly $5 million to the project’s cost.