Airport / North San Jose

Nestled next to the city of Santa Clara, Airport/North San Jose is the epicenter of Silicon Valley. For the most part, the district is cut into three parts: the small San Jose Airport, which is the premiere airport within Silicon valley, the mixed residential landscape which takes up the northern end of the neighborhood and the various Silicon Valley tech companies that are headquartered within the district’s limits. Geographically speaking, the neighborhood is a skinny area of land stretching along 880 and crosses US Route 10.

North San Jose’s flat residential terrain provides a combination of suburban real-estate within the acres of commercial property. There are a large number of older homes, condos and apartment facilities, but nothing that would blow you away. Rents can be a bit on the high end, considering its prime location amongst the popular technology firms. Median listings for rents tend to be in the mid $2,000 range for a two bedroom place. The area can be convenient for commuters, with it being a highway haven and the two Caltrain stations (Santa Clara and College Park) that skirt the southern end of the neighborhood. Although residents have to deal with noise pollution from the busy highways and planes flying overhead. I’d say the district is much more suited for the single, bustling metropolitan types with heavy wallets.

North San Jose is mostly dominated by the large technology firms, large office parks and a varied drive-in workforce. The neighborhood’s largest private employer is Cisco Systems while many other smaller firms are located within its close vicinity. These smaller firms are usually housed in large, single or two-story office buildings or glamorized warehouses, each with plenty of campus space for parking and elegant landscaping. Workers are also within minutes of California’s Great America. Just one of the many perks when you live in the third-largest city in California.

The central feature of North San Jose is the Mineta San Jose Airport. Once an international hub, the San Jose Airport has not had links outside of the United States since 2005, I believe—though it does have regular flights to Hawaii. Following the fortunes of this airport is like reading a history of Silicon Valley. When the Valley is doing well, the airport sees increases in traffic as businessmen from all over the world travels in to meet with Silicon execs. After declines like the crash of the Tech Bubble in the late 90’s, the airport suffers as well.

Recently the airport finally opened its hypermodern Terminal B (to add to terminals A and C). It has done so just in time for the current tech boom. As anyone who has been around Silicon Valley can tell you, the Great Recession is over for tech firms and has been for over a year.

Apropos of this, North San Jose is not just about the airport. In fact, north of the landing strips you will find a number of office parks filled with high tech firms. Chief amongst these is Cisco Microsystems, whose sprawling campus here in North San Jose (in what is technically a micro-neighborhood called River Oaks) houses the largest private workforce in San Jose (Cisco employs over 11,500 workers here). But Cisco is just one of many firms in the area with Qualcomm, Apache and several lesser known tech companies such as Lattice Semiconductor also choosing North San Jose for their headquarters.


It is this congregation of technology minded companies all in one location that makes Silicon Valley the throbbing heart of tech innovation and the engine of California’s economy. When a company like Cisco sets itself up here not only can it keep an eye on its competitors (and poach talent from nearby companies) but also they can forge partnerships with congruous companies so that their individual strengths are multiplied. In fact, companies will often toggle from being competitors to partners and back to competitors over the course of years—collaborating on some products, aggressively challenging each other (sometimes even engaging in patent wars) at other times.

This is Silicon Valley—the Florence of High Tech. Thus is appropriate that a northern micro-neighborhood here should be named “Renaissance.”

Of course, there are also residential sections of North San Jose. There are older homes, condos and some apartments. Typical rent prices run around $2200 for a two bedroom and it is not uncommon to see 1 bedroom for around $1800. As always, it is about the great location. A Cisco worker who puts in a lot of hours at work might be more than happy to pay the extra cost so as to save on commute times.