The Willow Glen Resident

Luxury apartments planned for 'run-down' WG property

By Michelle Ku

The Beverly Hillbillies moved away from a shack similar to those that sit on the southwest corner of Willow Glen Way and Almaden Road. The property owners want to tear town the structures and replace them with apartments the Clampetts would have been proud to move into after they struck oil.

Frank Randos and Ron Miller want to see the corner beautified and revitalized with the construction of a 32-unit apartment complex. They anticipate that the complex will be ready for move-in by spring of 1999.

"It is just so run down, and it's been vacant for six years. As it stands, it's a hazard," Miller said of the existing building. "We just want to clean up the corner lot, and we want to make a nice project."

The project proposal for what Randos and Miller are tentatively calling the Willow Glen Apartments is being reviewed by the San Jose Planning Department, and pending the approval of the Planning Commission on July 22 and the City Council on Aug. 4, groundbreaking should take place in late September or early October. The project developer is H. E. Bowen and Associates.

The Planning Department's report on the project should be completed this week, and the department will most likely support the proposed development, said senior planner Nancy Hemmen.

Cost of the proposed development is estimated at $2 to $2.5 million. Plans call for a Mediterranean-style villa complete with Spanish tile, awnings, park-like landscaping and a tot lot for children. The two-building apartment complex will have 16 units with one bedroom, a den and one bathroom and 16 units with two bedrooms and two bathrooms. The complex will also include a 57-space parking lot.

Rando said the cost to rent one of the units will depend on what the market will bear when the complex opens. Currently, he added, a typical one-bedroom apartment in the area is going for $1,150 to $1,200 a month, and a two-bedroom apartment rents for more than $1,450.

About half the units will be equipped with a washer and dryer. Rando and Miller said their research showed a trend in recent years toward including these appliances in apartments.

"There are a lot of single mothers with children, and we don't want them to have to leave their apartment once they've come home. With a washer-dryer unit in their own apartments, they don't have to go down the stairs to a washing facility. We wanted to be appealing to working people," Miller said.

Compared to the other high-density apartments near the location of Rando and Miller's project site, their apartment complex is relatively small. Down the street from their site are two 100-plus-unit apartment complexes.

The planned complex could have had as many as 56 units if the owners built below street level, but they chose not to. "We just decided to do a smaller complex. We wanted it to be quaint," Miller said.

The project should be good for Willow Glen, said Joe Guerra, chief of staff for District 6 City Councilmember Frank Fiscalini. "The city has earmarked that area for high-density residential. The plan calls for what the city has already designated that area to be."

Randos and Miller began working on the project last October when they purchased the first plot of land. "We checked with the Planning Department for what was zoned for that area, and it's high density. We knew then that's what we wanted to do," Miller said.

They purchased the second plot of land after approaching the owner. It wasn't even for sale, Randos said.

The project, which encompasses 1.3 acres of land, will take seven to 10 months to construct, Randos said.

Randos and Miller are both native to Willow Glen and have worked on three light-industrial projects in the area. The apartment complex will be their first housing project.

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