100 E Santa Clara St

100 E Santa Clara St is a 6-story building in Downtown San Jose with 91% of its floor area within daylight reach of a facade. This screen estimates 128 homes and scores it 93 out of 100 for office-to-residential conversion suitability.

CA-18 · Screened 2026-09-12 · Strong candidate

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Also addressed as 114 E Santa Clara St, 118 E Santa Clara St, 124 E Santa Clara St and 126 E Santa Clara St: San Jose’s address records place all 5 on this one footprint.

Where 100 E Santa Clara St is

Its block in Downtown San Jose, drawn from San Jose's own building outlines and street centerlines.

Suitability score

0–29

30–49

50–69

70–100

Already housing
Not screened
100 E Santa Clara St

100 E Santa Clara St and the 1,000 ft of Downtown San Jose around it. The streets are drawn at the width of the right-of-way they run down, sidewalks included, and named, and every building on these blocks is drawn. What is left open and stippled is neither: a surface lot, a plaza or a vacant parcel. The screened buildings are colored by the ramp above, the same one the district map uses, carry their score, and each is a link to its own page. Each casts a shadow as long as its measured height lets it, so towers stand out from the low buildings around them; the unscreened buildings have no measured height and cast none. 100 E Santa Clara St is outlined in its own score color at the outline it covers at ground level. Its windowless core is hatched. The inset places it among every building the screen covers.

Floor plan: 91% of each floor sits within daylight reach of a facade. The shading is daylight, darkest at the windows and gone 35 ft in. The hatched area is windowless core: 2,419 sq ft per floor that must be renovated but can never be rented as an apartment. The dimension marks the deepest interior point, 48 ft from the nearest window. A–A is where the section beside it is cut.

Section A–A: cut across the depth of the plate, through the middle of the core. Daylight reaches 35 ft in from every facade, fading as it goes, and the hatched stripe left between the lit edges is floor that gets converted and can never be rented: 2,419 sq ft on the floor the screen scores, and 12,093 sq ft over 5 residential floors. The shaded ground floor is converted like the rest and counted as no homes.

This building's conversion pencils at default assumptions without any subsidy.

Every floor carries 2,419 sq ft of windowless core — area that must be gutted, seismically braced and sprinklered but can never be rented as an apartment. Across 5 residential floors that is 12,093 sq ft of cost carrying no revenue.

Part of this building is already homes. San Jose's rental housing and condominium records list 21 apartments here, fewer than half the homes this model estimates the building could hold. The figures here treat the whole building as convertible, so read them as an upper bound and check which floors are already housing.

Modeled conversion metrics for 100 E Santa Clara St, 2026-09-12.

Suitability scoreStrong candidate	93 / 100
Storiesfrom 69 ft LiDAR height ÷ 12 ft floor-to-floor	6
Floor plateper floor, from the city footprint	26,568 sq ft
Daylight efficiencyshare within 35 ft of a facade	91%
Deepest interior pointviability threshold is 80 ft	48 ft
Windowless coreper floor — renovated but never rentable	2,419 sq ft
Estimated homesat 750 sq ft average	128
Conversion cost$405/sq ft all-in on 132,842 sq ft	$53.8M
Gap before grantpencils unsubsidized	-$599K
Modeled RESIDE grantbelow the statutory cap	$7.7M
BuiltSan Jose does not publish a construction year with this data	—
ZoningDowntown San Jose	DC
Opportunity Zonecensus tract 06085500901, 2018 designation	Yes

The plan: window line, shape and floor rhythm

37 ft of exterior wall for each home the screen estimates — enough for two- and three-bedroom homes across the plan.

The typical floor has 939 ft of exterior wall, and across 5 residential floors the building carries 4,696 ft of it in total, divided among the 128 homes this screen estimates.

Its plate is elongated at 0.38: a slab or an L, which is why so much of the floor lies within reach of a window: the outline buys daylight that a square plan of the same area would not. How window line and plate shape are measured.

At the model’s 750 sq ft average, the plan works out at about 25.6 homes per floor, repeated on every residential floor, since this building's outline does not change as it rises.

Why 100 E Santa Clara St scores 93 out of 100

Daylight efficiency 100, Interior depth 81, Scale 85, Finance 100 — each out of 100, then weighted.

Score components for 100 E Santa Clara St. Points are the subscore times its weight.

Component	Subscore	Weight	Points
Daylight efficiency91% of the floor area within 35 ft of a facade, scored from 40% up to 90%	100	45%	45.0
Interior depthdeepest interior point 48 ft from a facade, scored from 80 ft down to 40 ft	81	25%	20.3
Scale128 estimated homes, scored from 0 up to 150	85	15%	12.8
Financecompleted value covers conversion cost with 15% to spare, which tops out the component	100	15%	15.0

Most of what it earns comes from daylight efficiency, and what holds it back most is interior depth, at 81 out of 100: deepest interior point 48 ft from a facade, scored from 80 ft down to 40 ft.

What the conversion would cost

$405 per square foot all-in across 132,842 sq ft of converted floor, or $53.8M in total — about $420K for each of the 128 homes.

All-in cost per square foot for 100 E Santa Clara St: base cost plus the code work a change of use triggers.

Base conversion cost	$260/sq ft
Seismic retrofit (change of use)	$45/sq ft
Plumbing risers to every unit	$40/sq ft
Operable windows and glazing	$30/sq ft
Additional egress stair	$18/sq ft
Fire sprinklers (NFPA 13R)	$12/sq ft
All-in	$405/sq ft

That cost is charged across every converted square foot, including the 12,093 sq ft of windowless core, which has to be gutted, seismically braced and sprinklered like the rest of the building and then earns nothing. Against it the model sets a completed value of $425K a home, which for 128 homes is $54.4M.

What would have to be true

This one already clears the bar. The question is how much room it has before it stops.

At $425K a home, completed value covers the $53.8M of work with $599K to spare. Value per home would have to fall to $420K — 1% below the assumption — before the conversion stopped penciling, or all-in cost would have to rise from $405 to $410 per square foot. Neither is a wide margin in a market that moves, but this building does not need a grant to work.

Each of these, moved on its own, would be enough to undo that for 100 E Santa Clara St:

Single-assumption flip points for 100 E Santa Clara St, each holding the other three at their defaults.

Circulation efficiencythe binding constraint — the least this building would need	14% downto 69%
Completed value per home	15% downto $360K
Average unit size	16% upto 870 sq ft
Conversion cost per square foot	24% upto $322/sq ft

All four are sliders in the survey, where 100 E Santa Clara St re-scores against your own numbers.

How it compares in Downtown San Jose

100 E Santa Clara St ranks 10th of the 82 buildings screened here, against a median score of 64.

Its floor plate is better lit than 82% of them, and shallower than 84% of them at its deepest interior point. On size it is the 62nd largest by estimated homes. The full survey of all 82 buildings ranks and maps every one of them, and the list by address links each to its own page.

Within the DC zone

8th of 72 zoned DC — the comparison that shares its rules, rents and streets.

72 of the screened buildings are zoned DC. 100 E Santa Clara St ranks 8th of them against a median score of 61. 31 score 70 or more, their median deepest interior point is 68 ft from a facade against this building’s 48 ft, and together they would hold an estimated 23,276 homes. The group’s top scorer is 1 Almaden Blvd, at 100.

Its nearest match in size: 350 W Santa Clara St

The screened building closest to 100 E Santa Clara St in converted floor area is 350 W Santa Clara St: 131,169 sq ft over 8 stories, against 132,842 sq ft over 6 here.

100 E Santa Clara St scores 93 to its 96, and with the size held roughly equal most of that shortfall comes from interior depth: 81 out of 100 here, 91 there (deepest interior point 44 ft from a facade, scored from 80 ft down to 40 ft). On the money they sit in the same place: each pencils without a subsidy. The two stand about 2,800 ft apart.

Would it qualify for a RESIDE Act grant?

The model awards 100 E Santa Clara St $7.7M, on the assumption it qualifies. Whether it does, no published dataset can say.

That figure assumes the building meets the Act’s vacant-and-abandoned test, which turns on code-enforcement and receivership records no city publishes.

This building does sit in census tract 06085500901, a 2018 designated Opportunity Zone, which Section 201 lets HUD favor — one of the few statutory priorities this screen can actually check.

Other buildings screened near 100 E Santa Clara St

The 4 closest the screen also covers, from 370 ft away. They are the colored outlines on the plan at the top of this page.

52 E Santa Clara St
6 stories · 60% daylit · 221 estimated homes · scores 35/100 (Marginal)
about 370 ft away
101 E San Fernando St
6 stories · 39% daylit · already an apartment building
about 400 ft away
181 E Santa Clara St
25 stories · 57% daylit · 819 estimated homes · scores 35/100 (Marginal)
about 430 ft away
16 N 3rd St
9 stories · 100% daylit · already an apartment building
about 450 ft away

A screen, not a feasibility study, from outlines and heights rather than plans: the method and how to correct a figure. If you know this building’s interior, you know what this model cannot see.