SAN JOSE — A Bay Area investor has bought an empty former Safeway store in a deal that could breathe new life into a downtown San Jose site that has been vacant for six years.
Babu Paturi, who is based at a residence in San Jose, paid $2 million in an all-cash deal to buy the site at 100 South Second St., according to documents filed on Sept. 8 with the Santa Clara County Recorder’s Office.
Paturi is the manager of at least one LLC, state and county public documents show.
The new owner’s plans for the site at the corner of South Second Street and East San Fernando Street weren’t immediately clear. The property is on the ground floor of a 197-unit residential tower and is near San Jose State University.
The transaction included other parcels below the housing units. One of the other just-sold parcels corresponds to the commercial space at 96 East San Fernando St. next to Third Street.
In 2019, Safeway shuttered the South Second Street site, pulling the plug on an experiment with a small-format store.
Safeway’s exit left that part of downtown San Jose without a supermarket. About a mile away, Whole Foods operates a grocery store at 777 The Alameda, on the western edges of downtown.
“This is on a great corner,” Erik Hayden, an executive with Urban Catalyst, a real estate firm whose affiliate owns a parking garage next to the just-sold commercial space, said during an interview in June at the time the parcels were up for sale.
Hayden said shops and dining establishments would do well if the spaces were split up.
“Retail and restaurant tenants are very interested in this space,” Hayden said. “A lot of restaurants or stores would be happy in that space.”