SAN JOSE — A development firm now owns another piece of a puzzle it must assemble to build a housing and office project consisting of side-by-side towers in downtown San Jose.
Urban Catalyst has bought property on North Fourth Street that’s known as the First Presbyterian Church of San Jose, documents filed with Santa Clara County officials show.
With the acquisition, Urban Catalyst continues to accumulate properties where the company intends to build a 20-story office tower called Icon and a 26-story housing highrise called Echo.
“Icon and Echo are going to help revitalize this part of the downtown,” said Erik Hayden, founder and managing partner with San Jose-based Urban Catalyst.
UC 49 N 4th Owner, an Urban Catalyst affiliate, paid $16 million for the property at 49 N. 4th St. in San Jose, according to the county public records.
To help finance the purchase, Urban Catalyst received an $8.8 million loan from a group headed by Bolour Associates, a Beverly Hills-based real estate investment firm, county and state documents show.
Until 2019, the property was the home of a 170-year-old Presbyterian congregation.
The seller was an entity headed by Martin Menne, who heads MCM Diversified, a development partner of legendary real estate firm Swenson, the county documents show. MCM Diversified bought the property in 2019, paying $4.4 million at the time.
Urban Catalyst has big plans for a portion of the block on sites that front on East Santa Clara Street, North Fourth Street and East St. John Street.
The Echo housing tower would accommodate about 300 homes and the Icon office tower would total about 420,000 square feet, according to preliminary plans Urban Catalyst has filed with San Jose city officials.
With the most recent acquisition, Urban Catalyst now owns two of the four parcels required for the development. The company has options on the two remaining parcels.
In 2019, the developer bought a gas station site at 147 E. Santa Clara St. at the corner of North Fourth Street, paying $15.9 million, in a deal arranged by Mark Ritchie, president of Ritchie Commercial, a real estate firm.
“We have control of all the properties that we need,” Hayden said.
And these two towers would sprout across the street from the under-construction Miro residential and retail tower and across the way from the San Jose city government tower and rotunda.
Plus, the developer of Miro, Bay View Development, also owns properties on another corner of that intersection.
This means Fourth and Santa Clara streets could have new development on three of the four corners and the municipal government complex on the fourth corner.
It’s expected that a future downtown San Jose BART station could have an entrance next to that intersection or nearby.
“Dominated by City Hall and the very visible, just-completed Miro Towers, we can really see this as the most dense neighborhood on the east side of downtown San Jose alongside BART,” Ritchie said in an interview in April about the Icon and Echo towers complex.
Just a few blocks to the west, projects are either in the works or are under way to redevelop or revamp properties on all four corners of First and Santa Clara streets, also at or near the site of a potential BART entrance.
“It makes sense that Santa Clara Street is being reactivated,” Hayden said. “Historically, Santa Clara Street was the center of the downtown. With the new development activity and the transit access, this is going to be a revitalized part of downtown San Jose.”
