28 N 4th St

28 N 4th St is a 28-story apartment building in Downtown San Jose. Its floor plate has 79% of its area within daylight reach of a facade and scores 75 out of 100 on this screen’s measures, which is part of why it works as housing.

CA-18 · Screened 2026-10-20 · Already housing

Where 28 N 4th 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
28 N 4th St

28 N 4th 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. 28 N 4th 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: 3,477 sq ft per floor that must be renovated but can never be rented as an apartment. The dimension marks the deepest interior point, 61 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: 3,477 sq ft on the floor the screen scores, and 93,888 sq ft over 27 residential floors. The shaded ground floor is converted like the rest and counted as no homes.

This is already an apartment building: OpenStreetMap maps it as a residential building; San Jose's rental housing and condominium records do not list its homes yet. 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 3,477 sq ft of windowless core — area that must be gutted, seismically braced and sprinklered but can never be rented as an apartment. Across 27 residential floors that is 93,888 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 OpenStreetMap’s.

Modeled conversion metrics for 28 N 4th St, 2026-10-20.

Suitability scoreStrong candidate	75 / 100
Storiesfrom OpenStreetMap, “Miro West Tower, way 936575129”, in place of the 298 ft LiDAR height ÷ 12 ft floor-to-floor	28
Floor plateper floor, from the city footprint	16,531 sq ft
Daylight efficiencyshare within 35 ft of a facade	79%
Deepest interior pointviability threshold is 80 ft	61 ft
Windowless coreper floor — renovated but never rentable	3,477 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

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

The typical floor has 506 ft of exterior wall, and across 27 residential floors the building carries 13,669 ft of it in total, divided among the 375 homes this screen estimates.

Its plate is compact at 0.81: 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 13.9 homes per floor, repeated on every residential floor, since this building's outline does not change as it rises.

Why 28 N 4th St scores 75 out of 100

Daylight efficiency 78, Interior depth 46, Scale 100, Finance 89 — each out of 100, then weighted.

Score components for 28 N 4th 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%	78	45%	35.1
Interior depthdeepest interior point 61 ft from a facade, scored from 80 ft down to 40 ft	46	25%	11.6
Scale375 estimated homes, scored from 0 up to 150	100	15%	15.0
Financeremaining gap is 6% of conversion cost, scored from 60% down to 0%	89	15%	13.4

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 61 ft from a facade, scored from 80 ft down to 40 ft.

Other buildings screened near 28 N 4th St

The 4 closest the screen also covers, from 160 ft away. They are the colored outlines on the plan at the top of this page.

181 E Santa Clara St
28 stories · 78% daylit · already an apartment building
about 160 ft away
50 N 4th St
4 stories · 56% daylit · 89 estimated homes · scores 31/100 (Marginal)
about 180 ft away
156 E St John St
6 stories · 100% daylit · already an apartment building
about 330 ft away
26 N 5th St
7 stories · 80% daylit · already an apartment building
about 380 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.