Property deal helps launch San Jose housing development near BART

SAN JOSE — A housing development planned near a San Jose BART station reached a key milestone after a homebuilder’s purchase of the site. The deal is a key step toward a project that eventually will produce 600-plus homes.

KB Home South Bay paid $9.4 million to buy a site where 48 for-sale residences are slated to be built at 1655 Berryessa Rd., documents filed on Wednesday with the Santa Clara County Recorder’s Office show.

The 48 residences would consist of 24 townhomes and 24 single-family detached houses on a site that is part of a property near the Berryessa BART station where hundreds of homes are in the works, according to Ralph Borelli, a commercial real estate executive who is a consultant for members of the Facchino family, the sellers of the property,.

“This is an important step,” Borelli said. “You will see hundreds of homes built here that will be within walking distance to BART.”

Currently, the Berryessa station is the only BART stop in San Jose.

KB Home South Bay is undertaking wide-ranging endeavors to prepare the entire site for several hundred more homes. It is conducting structure demolitions, grading, underground utility installations, and building streets, sidewalks, and landscaping, according to Borelli.

“This will create all the infrastructure needed for all of the housing that will be built on this site,” said Erik Schoennauer, a land-use and planning consultant who helped guide the project through the city’s planning review process.

The overall development site totals about 13 acres. The just-bought property where KB will develop for-sale townhomes and single-family residences covers a small portion of that.

Other components of the housing development site that are still in the works, according to Borelli and Schoennauer, include 260 affordable apartment units and 338 market-rate apartment units.

Bay Area real estate firm Swenson is expected to build the affordable units.

“The affordable homes are possible because Swenson received state and federal tax credits for the project,” Borelli said.

The for-sale residences could become available starting in 2027, according to Borelli.

The Facchino family currently owns the unsold portions of the 13 acres but is expected to sell the other sections to the eventual developers.

The homes that will sprout at the 1655 Berryessa sites are near a busy shopping center whose anchors are Safeway and CVS.

“This is becoming a really interesting mixed-use neighborhood right at the Berryessa transit center,” Schoennauer said.