505 E Santa Clara St

505 E Santa Clara St is a 7-story apartment building in Downtown San Jose. Its floor plate has 100% of its area within daylight reach of a facade and scores 99 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 505 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
505 E Santa Clara St

505 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. 505 E Santa Clara St is outlined in its own score color at the outline it covers at ground level. The inset places it among every building the screen covers.

Floor plan: 100% of each floor sits within daylight reach of a facade, with no dead core at all. The shading is daylight, darkest at the windows and gone 35 ft in. The dimension marks the deepest interior point, 33 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, and here it meets in the middle: the plate is thin enough that no floor is left windowless. The shaded ground floor is converted like the rest and counted as no homes.

This is already an apartment building: OpenStreetMap maps it as an apartment 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.

This footprint has no windowless core at all: every point on the floor plate is within 35 ft of a facade, which is unusual and is the main reason it scores as well as it does.

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 floor count is OpenStreetMap’s.

Modeled conversion metrics for 505 E Santa Clara St, 2026-10-20.

Suitability scoreStrong candidate	99 / 100
Storiesfrom OpenStreetMap, “Sparta505, way 1005175969”, in place of the 84 ft LiDAR height ÷ 12 ft floor-to-floor	7
Floor plateper floor, from the city footprint	22,505 sq ft
Daylight efficiencyshare within 35 ft of a facade	100%
Deepest interior pointviability threshold is 80 ft	33 ft
Windowless coreper floor — renovated but never rentable	0 sq ft
BuiltSan Jose does not publish a construction year with this data	—
ZoningDowntown San Jose	CP(PD)
Opportunity Zonenot in a 2018 designated tract	No

The plan: window line, shape and floor rhythm

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

The typical floor has 953 ft of exterior wall, and across 6 residential floors the building carries 5,717 ft of it in total, divided among the 144 homes this screen estimates.

Its plate is elongated at 0.31: 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 24.0 homes per floor, repeated on every residential floor, since this building's outline does not change as it rises.

Why 505 E Santa Clara St scores 99 out of 100

Daylight efficiency 100, Interior depth 100, Scale 96, Finance 100 — each out of 100, then weighted.

Score components for 505 E Santa Clara St. Points are the subscore times its weight.

Component	Subscore	Weight	Points
Daylight efficiency100% of the floor area within 35 ft of a facade, scored from 40% up to 90%	100	45%	45.0
Interior depthdeepest interior point 33 ft from a facade, scored from 80 ft down to 40 ft	100	25%	25.0
Scale144 estimated homes, scored from 0 up to 150	96	15%	14.4
Financecompleted value covers conversion cost with 28% to spare, which tops out the component	100	15%	15.0

Every component scores at or near full marks, so nothing in the geometry or the pro-forma is holding this one back — daylight efficiency carries the most weight of the four.

Other buildings screened near 505 E Santa Clara St

The 4 closest the screen also covers, from 750 ft away. They are the colored outlines on the plan at the top of this page.

601 E Santa Clara St
10 stories · 79% daylit · 183 estimated homes · scores 85/100 (Strong candidate)
about 750 ft away
227 E Santa Clara St
8 stories · 98% daylit · already an apartment building
about 1,980 ft away
26 N 5th St
7 stories · 80% daylit · already an apartment building
about 2,140 ft away
181 E Santa Clara St
28 stories · 78% daylit · already an apartment building
about 2,370 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.