SAN JOSE — A huge data center could sprout in the Alviso district of north San Jose, a new proposal for empty land that once was slated to be part of a now-scuttled proposal for an entertainment district.
If approved by San Jose city officials, the proposed data center would be built on a site near the Topgolf venue in Alviso.
The tech complex would consist of a three-story data center and a three-story energy supply facility, according to documents on file with the San Jose Planning Department.
This is the second time the property’s owner has floated the notion of a data center and energy supply hub on this site, which is bounded by North First Street, Anderson Alley, Top Golf Drive and Liberty Street.
Together, the two buildings would total 462,400 square feet if they are developed as currently proposed, according to the planning documents.
The data center is expected to total 295,100 square feet while the energy supply hub would total 167,400 square feet.
The prior proposal envisioned a project totaling 346,900 square feet, consisting of a two-story data center totaling 172,500 square feet and a power hub totaling 174,400 square feet.
The development site totals about 9.3 acres, according to documents on file with the Santa Clara County Assessor’s Office.
An affiliate of Terra Ventures that owns the property proposed both versions of the data center complex.
The data center project, however, is dramatically different from the real estate firm’s original vision for the empty land.
In 2018, Terra Ventures floated the idea for a vast entertainment district consisting of restaurants, shops, two hotels and a Topgolf complex.
The Topgolf venue is the only component of the ambitious plan that became a reality.
Located at 10 Top Golf Drive, Topgolf is a destination entertainment hub that offers golf, drinks and dining as its primary features.
One of the hotel sites, located at 7 Topgolf Drive, that was never developed eventually landed in foreclosure and was seized by its lender. An affiliate of the lender now owns the property.
In 2024, Los Angeles-based LH Housing proposed a residential project consisting of 780 affordable apartments on the 3.2-acre 7 Topgolf site.
The entertainment district proposal’s failure is a consequence of the fading fortunes of hotels and big-box retail centers, as well as a sometimes forbidding landscape for restaurants and movie theaters in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak and the government-ordered shutdowns to combat the spread of the deadly bug.
Housing developments and tech data centers — when these two asset types can be financed at a time of elevated interest rates — are now among the darlings of the real estate sector.
Yet even these types of popular projects must hurdle obstacles to flourish.
Data centers are facilities that hunger for adequate electricity to feed power to their banks, rows and floors of computer servers.
Affordable housing projects often require government- or tax-subsidized stacks of financing and conventional construction funding.