CA: Massive mixed-income housing development sprouts near San Jose transit station

Marked with some pomp and circumstance — including a cannon firing to commemorate its launch — a major development project will add 708 homes near the Berryessa BART Station to the already significant investment pouring into and transforming North San Jose.

On Monday, city dignitaries and the Facchino Family officially kicked off the first phase of the Berryessa BART urban village, which includes a new neighborhood built on a 13-acre site at 1655 Berryessa Road consisting of a mix of affordable housing, townhomes and single-family residences within walking distance of the major transit hub.

“Here you’ve got unparalleled access to transit, and so that’s really what this project means,” Mayor Matt Mahan said. “That’s what the Facchino family is making possible here: 700 more homes ultimately for families, places for kids to grow up, to have birthdays, to do their homework and to build a future in our valley. For far too many people, that opportunity to achieve the American dream here in Silicon Valley has been out of reach.”

After starting its trucking company in 1931, the Facchino family relocated its business from Japantown to the Berryessa location after acquiring the property in 1972.

The family ran the business for nearly five decades before leasing the property to industrial users and to accommodate the builders of the nearby Berryessa BART station.

The San Jose City Council had previously approved plans for the site that included a combination of up to 850 apartments and condos and a commercial building up to 455,000 square feet, but with the struggles of the office market, the plan became infeasible to finance.

The most up-to-date iteration of the project is split into several blocks, including 260 “affordable” apartments developed by Swenson and 48 townhomes and single-family residences developed by KB Homes.

Of the 260 units, 26 would be reserved for very-low income households making between 30-50% area median income (AMI), while 130 units would be reserved for households making between 50 and 80% AMI. Moderate-income households would have access to 101 units, while the remaining three apartments will serve as manager’s units. The AMI for a family of four in Santa Clara County this year is $195,200.

Future development plans also include 338 market-rate apartments and another 62 for-sale units.

“Once construction of the BART station was completed, it was time to transition the property to a higher and better use,” said Erik Schoennauer, a land-use consultant. “We worked with the city departments, the mayor and councilmember to develop the Berryessa BART urban village, which envisions the high-density urban neighborhood on this property in order to support transit ridership on BART and VTA buses, support retail sales on Berryessa and the flea market and the shopping center down the street, and also future job growth in North San Jose and downtown. People can commute fairly easily from this site to the major job centers of the city.”

While developments in downtown San Jose draw more attention, North San Jose has seen a significant influx of investment over the past several years, including several data center projects, and has shown the greatest potential for future housing production.

The area has several large projects either in the planning or development phase, including another urban village project that could bring nearly 1,500 homes to the former Sakauye Family farm site near the intersection of Seely Avenue and Montague Expressway.

City officials view the Facchino Family’s project as a piece of the larger puzzle near the Berryessa station, which could also see another massive development at the site of the Flea Market. Overall, the Berryessa urban village could accommodate more than 4,800 new homes and additional jobs over a roughly 270-acre area.

“This wasn’t just about maximizing a profit or putting in single-family homes, but knowing what our community needs,” District 4 Councilmember David Cohen said. “We need some affordable housing projects. We need some middle-income housing. We need a variety of things on this site and that was the goal of this family.”

Though the city will reap the benefits of the new development, San Jose still faces challenges with housing development.

Despite state mandates to plan for 62,200 new homes by 2031, the city’s housing production has significantly fallen behind the pace needed, partly due to the unfriendly business climate that has made projects difficult to build.

Schoennauer noted that this year, only New York had higher construction costs than the Bay Area.

While most of the largest cities in the country have seen permit activity drop, a study by HomeAbroad also found that San Jose’s figures illustrated the most precipitous drop. Comparing 2025 to 2020, San Jose saw a permit decline of 68%.

Last year, the city also saw zero market-rate multifamily developments with over 20 units begin construction, prompting the city to unveil a new incentive program that cuts fees and taxes to help spur plans that had sat on shelves for years.

“The best solution is to have the production of housing be easier, faster and cheaper by streamlining city processes and reducing cities’ fees and taxes on housing,” Schoennauer said. “It’s also critically important that we publicly subsidize affordable housing, which is happening in this project with federal tax credits. We need city leadership to be successful in all this.”

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