A decade after Google began buying land for its ambitious $19 billion Downtown West megacampus in San Jose, block after block of the milelong industrial corridor sits empty, wrapped in chain-link fencing.
The Orchard Supply Hardware store, where Google once planned high-rise housing next to its new offices, sits shuttered in a vast empty parking lot. Along the barbed-wire fence, a small homeless encampment has begun to creep in.
This 80-acre stretch of property was supposed to become the centerpiece of a once-in-a-generation plan to transform San Jose’s urban core.
Construction should have been in full swing by now.
Crews and cranes would be erecting 7 million square feet of offices for a Google campus anchored at Diridon Station. Nearly 6,000 housing units would rise alongside shops, hotels, restaurants and 15 acres of riverfront parks stretching from SAP Center to Interstate 280…