The Grad San Jose was recently ranked the #8 largest construction project by size in San Jose by the Silicon Valley Business Journal. The Grad San Jose is AMCAL Equities, LLC’s newest student housing project near San Jose State University (SJSU).
This article originally appeared in the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Visit that website to read more of the article.
Veteran developer AMCAL Equities, LLC, is poised to complete The Grad San Jose in August — just in time for students who will be returning to SJSU in the Fall.
The Grad sits across the street from San Jose State University and is the first high-rise student housing building in San Jose, California. The Grad is a joint venture project with Swenson.
The mixed-use, 260-unit building will include apartments and student amenities. Most floor plans are designed to give students their own private bathrooms. One four-bedroom floor plan will include three bathrooms.
The Grad San Jose will include a three-story parking deck and an amenities deck above the parking deck on the back side of the high-rise building. The amenities deck will include a building with an exercise center, a swimming pool with sundeck, sports courts, picnic area and landscaping. The first floor of the high-rise will include 14,750-square-feet of retail space.
The Grad San Jose was featured in July 2020 in an article in Forbes Magazine. You can read more of the article at that news website.
The Bay Area’s affordability crisis is not just hitting low-income and middle-class families. Local universities are struggling with ways to provide affordable housing for students, teachers and staff. Without affordable housing, students are less likely to succeed at these schools and universities cannot recruit and retain talented faculty and staff.
“We are getting our asses kicked by New York. We pretty much accept the top art students in the world, and we lose them to Pratt in Brooklyn because they have housing,” California College of the Arts Director of Research and Planning David Meckel said. “The California Conservatory of Music has the same problem. They just lose them to Julliard.”
Meckel, along with developers, consultants, designers and other education administrators, discussed the challenges and impacts associated with a lack of affordable student housing during Bisnow’s NorCal Student Housing & Development event Wednesday.