Posted on Mon, Dec. 01, 2003

Lowe's should revise plans to save historic IBM building
By Alex Marthews

Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse is coming to San Jose, and it is coming in big, mean and fast. It is coming in with a big-box, preset design that's the exact one it uses everywhere else, whether it's Baltimore, Kansas or Los Angeles. And it has no time for the community or its concerns. It took the project to the San Jose Planning Commission on Nov. 19, and it goes before the City Council on Tuesday.

One small corner of this design overlaps with an exceptionally significant historic building. IBM Building 25 was designed by the famous architect John Bolles, who also designed Candlestick Park. It was the home of the IBM advanced research team that produced the world's first magnetic hard drive. Building 25, along with the HP garage and 99 Notre Dame, are more or less our only relics of the very beginning of Silicon Valley, the process that turned the Valley of Heart's Delight into the richest and most innovative area on Earth.

At the Preservation Action Council of San Jose, we deeply value this history. The best way to respect our history is to reuse the building, not tear it down.

The good news is that it's easy to do. Lowe's could build the same size store in the same shape, with all the good jobs San Jose needs, but in a slightly different part of this roomy 19-acre site, so that not even that small corner of Building 25 overlaps with its plans.

Instead of new retail buildings, let's fill Building 25 with the kind of flourishing retail businesses -- restaurants, cafes and small office spaces -- that San Jose sorely needs. All it would take is for Lowe's to move its store a few feet.

The planning commission has recommended to the city council that it retain the ``majority or all'' of Building 25. Moving the proposed retail stores into Building 25 would save it all. Saving only part of it would critically damage the building's historic value. Lowe's has said that IBM Building 25 is much less historically significant if you take away the landscaping that surrounds it. The city, the historic landmarks commission and IBM's historic consultant all disagree. They say that the significant part is the building itself.

Imagine for a moment that you own a Picasso in a nice frame. Even without the frame, it's still a Picasso and still worth keeping. What would really diminish its value is to cut away part of the picture itself; whether you like Picasso or not, that would be a bad idea. Building 25 is like that painting. Demolishing it, in whole or in part, is vandalism.

The demolition of Building 25 is only part of the damage this project would cause.

It would destroy more than 350 trees, 150 of them requiring city approval for removal, to make Lowe's more visible from the road. It would replace them with young trees which, if we're lucky, would years from now rival what they plan to cut down now.

Excuse me for not being thrilled. I didn't realize we had so many trees that we can afford to lose 350 at a stroke -- or that we had so many historic buildings that we can throw one away because Lowe's is unwilling to move a few feet.

Let's tell Lowe's to move a little, save the building intact for retail use and save at least some of the trees.

Let's shoot for a great project, instead of being content with a bad one. That's what the real Silicon Valley is all about.

ALEX MARTHEWS is executive director of the Preservation Action Council of San Jose. He wrote this for the Mercury News.