88 E San Carlos St

88 E San Carlos St is a 17-story apartment building in Downtown San Jose. Its floor plate has 49% of its area within daylight reach of a facade and scores 27 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

Where 88 E San Carlos 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
88 E San Carlos St

88 E San Carlos 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. 88 E San Carlos 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: 49% 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: 32,101 sq ft per floor that must be renovated but can never be rented as an apartment. The dimension marks the deepest interior point, 114 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: 32,101 sq ft on the floor the screen scores, and 513,610 sq ft over 16 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 263 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 32,101 sq ft of windowless core — area that must be gutted, seismically braced and sprinklered but can never be rented as an apartment. Across 16 residential floors that is 513,610 sq ft of cost carrying no revenue.

Modeled conversion metrics for 88 E San Carlos St, 2026-09-12.

Suitability scoreUnlikely	27 / 100
Storiesfrom 206 ft LiDAR height ÷ 12 ft floor-to-floor	17
Floor plateper floor, from the city footprint	62,539 sq ft
Daylight efficiencyshare within 35 ft of a facade	49%
Deepest interior pointviability threshold is 80 ft	114 ft
Windowless coreper floor — renovated but never rentable	32,101 sq ft
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

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 1,027 ft of exterior wall, and across 16 residential floors the building carries 16,437 ft of it in total, divided among the 519 homes this screen estimates.

Its plate is compact at 0.74: 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 32.4 homes per floor, repeated on every residential floor, since this building's outline does not change as it rises.

Why 88 E San Carlos St scores 27 out of 100

Daylight efficiency 17, Interior depth 0, Scale 100, Finance 28 — each out of 100, then weighted.

Score components for 88 E San Carlos St. Points are the subscore times its weight.

Component	Subscore	Weight	Points
Daylight efficiency49% of the floor area within 35 ft of a facade, scored from 40% up to 90%	17	45%	7.8
Interior depthdeepest interior point 114 ft from a facade, scored from 80 ft down to 40 ft	0	25%	0.0
Scale519 estimated homes, scored from 0 up to 150	100	15%	15.0
Financeremaining gap is 43% of conversion cost, scored from 60% down to 0%	28	15%	4.2

Most of what it earns comes from scale, and what holds it back most is interior depth, at 0 out of 100: deepest interior point 114 ft from a facade, scored from 80 ft down to 40 ft.

Other buildings screened near 88 E San Carlos St

The 4 closest the screen also covers, from 420 ft away. They are the colored outlines on the plan at the top of this page.

300 S 1st St
7 stories · 75% daylit · 101 estimated homes · scores 62/100 (Worth a feasibility study)
about 420 ft away
94 E San Carlos St
8 stories · 52% daylit · 261 estimated homes · scores 31/100 (Marginal)
about 490 ft away
111 E San Carlos St
7 stories · 43% daylit · already an apartment building
about 510 ft away
301 S 1st St
22 stories · 45% daylit · 1,549 estimated homes · scores 23/100 (Unlikely)
about 730 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.