196 N 3rd St

196 N 3rd St is a 6-story building in Downtown San Jose with 79% of its floor area within daylight reach of a facade. This screen estimates 73 homes and scores it 69 out of 100 for office-to-residential conversion suitability.

CA-18 · Screened 2026-10-20 · Worth a feasibility study

Where 196 N 3rd 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
196 N 3rd St

196 N 3rd 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. 196 N 3rd 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: 79% 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: 3,730 sq ft per floor that must be renovated but can never be rented as an apartment. The dimension marks the deepest interior point, 62 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: 3,730 sq ft on the floor the screen scores, and 18,648 sq ft over 5 residential floors. The shaded ground floor is converted like the rest and counted as no homes.

Calisphere describes it as an athletic club in the former Scottish Rite Temple. Downtown zoning permits it alongside offices, which is why it is on the map, but it is not office space, so this site does not count it as a conversion candidate.

Every floor carries 3,730 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 18,648 sq ft of cost carrying no revenue.

Separated from its neighbors. The city’s map draws this building and the ones beside it as one outline with one height. This outline comes from OpenStreetMap, which maps them separately, and its height is the city’s LiDAR height for the whole outline, since every other building on it is measured lower.

Modeled conversion metrics for 196 N 3rd St, 2026-10-20.

Suitability scoreWorth a feasibility study	69 / 100
Storiesfrom 77 ft LiDAR height ÷ 12 ft floor-to-floor	6
Floor plateper floor, from the city footprint	17,515 sq ft
Daylight efficiencyshare within 35 ft of a facade	79%
Deepest interior pointviability threshold is 80 ft	62 ft
Windowless coreper floor — renovated but never rentable	3,730 sq ft
BuiltSan Jose does not publish a construction year with this data	—
ZoningDowntown San Jose	DC
Opportunity Zonecensus tract 06085501000, 2018 designation	Yes

The plan: window line, shape and floor rhythm

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

The typical floor has 549 ft of exterior wall, and across 5 residential floors the building carries 2,744 ft of it in total, divided among the 73 homes this screen estimates.

Its plate is compact at 0.73: close to a square or a circle, the most efficient envelope an office can have and the least generous one for apartments: little perimeter to divide among homes. How window line and plate shape are measured.

At the model’s 750 sq ft average, the plan works out at about 14.6 homes per floor, repeated on every residential floor, since this building's outline does not change as it rises.

Why 196 N 3rd St scores 69 out of 100

Daylight efficiency 77, Interior depth 46, Scale 49, Finance 100 — each out of 100, then weighted.

Score components for 196 N 3rd St. Points are the subscore times its weight.

Component	Subscore	Weight	Points
Daylight efficiency79% of the floor area within 35 ft of a facade, scored from 40% up to 90%	77	45%	34.8
Interior depthdeepest interior point 62 ft from a facade, scored from 80 ft down to 40 ft	46	25%	11.4
Scale73 estimated homes, scored from 0 up to 150	49	15%	7.3
Financeremaining gap is 0% of conversion cost, scored from 60% down to 0%	100	15%	15.0

Most of what it earns comes from daylight efficiency, and what holds it back most is interior depth, at 46 out of 100: deepest interior point 62 ft from a facade, scored from 80 ft down to 40 ft.

Other buildings screened near 196 N 3rd St

The 4 closest the screen also covers, from 110 ft away. They are the colored outlines on the plan at the top of this page.

160 N 3rd St
5 stories · 100% daylit · 33 estimated homes · scores 88/100 (Strong candidate)
about 110 ft away
152 N 3rd St
9 stories · 79% daylit · 177 estimated homes · scores 81/100 (Strong candidate)
about 230 ft away
97 E St James St
5 stories · 90% daylit · already a condominium building
about 300 ft away
210 N 4th St
6 stories · 85% daylit · 60 estimated homes · scores 77/100 (Strong candidate)
about 400 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.