101 E San Fernando St

101 E San Fernando St is a 6-story apartment building in Downtown San Jose. Its floor plate has 39% of its area within daylight reach of a facade and scores 17 out of 100 on this screen’s measures, which is part of why it works as housing.

CA-18 · Screened 2026-09-12 · Already housing

Also addressed as 88 S 3rd St, 96 S 3rd St and 99 S 4th St: San Jose’s address records place all 4 on this one footprint.

Where 101 E San Fernando 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
101 E San Fernando St

101 E San Fernando 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. 101 E San Fernando 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: 39% 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: 76,239 sq ft per floor that must be renovated but can never be rented as an apartment. The dimension marks the deepest interior point, 134 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: 76,239 sq ft on the floor the screen scores, and 381,197 sq ft over 5 residential floors. The shaded ground floor is converted like the rest and counted as no homes.

This is already an apartment building: San Jose's rental housing and condominium records list 321 apartments here. It is on the map because downtown zoning permits offices and homes alike, but this site does not count it as a conversion candidate.

Every floor carries 76,239 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 381,197 sq ft of cost carrying no revenue.

Read with caution. This footprint carries 4 street addresses across 125,245 sq ft, which usually means the city’s GIS has merged a block or complex into a single polygon rather than describing one convertible building.

Modeled conversion metrics for 101 E San Fernando St, 2026-09-12.

Suitability scoreUnlikely	17 / 100
Storiesfrom 73 ft LiDAR height ÷ 12 ft floor-to-floor	6
Floor plateper floor, from the city footprint	125,245 sq ft
Daylight efficiencyshare within 35 ft of a facade	39%
Deepest interior pointviability threshold is 80 ft	134 ft
Windowless coreper floor — renovated but never rentable	76,239 sq ft
BuiltSan Jose does not publish a construction year with this data	—
ZoningDowntown San Jose	A(PD)
Opportunity Zonecensus tract 06085500901, 2018 designation	Yes

The plan: window line, shape and floor rhythm

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

The typical floor has 1,645 ft of exterior wall, and across 5 residential floors the building carries 8,226 ft of it in total, divided among the 261 homes this screen estimates.

Its plate is moderately compact at 0.58: a squarish plan, with enough perimeter for a conventional double-loaded corridor. How window line and plate shape are measured.

At the model’s 750 sq ft average, the plan works out at about 52.2 homes per floor, repeated on every residential floor, since this building's outline does not change as it rises.

Why 101 E San Fernando St scores 17 out of 100

Daylight efficiency 0, Interior depth 0, Scale 100, Finance 13 — each out of 100, then weighted.

Score components for 101 E San Fernando St. Points are the subscore times its weight.

Component	Subscore	Weight	Points
Daylight efficiency39% of the floor area within 35 ft of a facade, scored from 40% up to 90%	0	45%	0.0
Interior depthdeepest interior point 134 ft from a facade, scored from 80 ft down to 40 ft	0	25%	0.0
Scale261 estimated homes, scored from 0 up to 150	100	15%	15.0
Financeremaining gap is 52% of conversion cost, scored from 60% down to 0%	13	15%	1.9

Most of what it earns comes from scale, and what holds it back most is daylight efficiency, at 0 out of 100: 39% of the floor area within 35 ft of a facade, scored from 40% up to 90%.

Other buildings screened near 101 E San Fernando St

The 4 closest the screen also covers, from 290 ft away. They are the colored outlines on the plan at the top of this page.

44 S 4th St
8 stories · 62% daylit · 230 estimated homes · scores 49/100 (Marginal)
about 290 ft away
100 E Santa Clara St
6 stories · 91% daylit · 128 estimated homes · scores 93/100 (Strong candidate)
about 400 ft away
52 E Santa Clara St
6 stories · 60% daylit · 221 estimated homes · scores 35/100 (Marginal)
about 490 ft away
100 E San Fernando St
6 stories · 39% daylit · already a condominium building
about 540 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.