San Jose’s Columbus Park, once the site of the South Bay’s largest homeless encampment is now fully cleared and ready for a massive restoration.
The city’s objective was to find housing or shelter for the almost 400 residents, many who have lived here for years.
Wednesday, the mayor’s office says 250 camp residents are now indoors.
City Mayor Matt Mahan says visitors are already showing up at nearby trails once surrounded or blocked by tents.
“We’ve seen trail usage go up 100%, so people are coming back out to Columbus Park to Guadalupe trail network and using their public space once again,” Mahan said.
The park’s restoration means that the baseball diamond, once the home of Little League, will be repaired and a 5-acre dog park will now be more accessible.
A grand opening was planned two years ago but was canceled due to the encampment.
Former City Council member Dev Davis, who championed the idea, is happy to see the dog park, which is technically open, more accessible to the general public.
“I worked really hard to ensure we had a very large dog park in the city of San Jose, and that is largest dog park in the City of San Jose so it’ll be great to have it available for everyone to be able to use and get their dogs very dirty,” Davis said.
But homeless advocates say they want to make sure the ongoing relocation of the encampment residents isn’t shortchanged in the process.
“I’m sure people have already forgotten. ‘Oh, we have a clean park, forget about them.’ These people that are living in the motels or living in the tents out in ‘tent city’ on Taylor, they need to be in permanent housing… permanent supportive housing. We don’t have that,” said Gail Osmer, the founder of Hands 4 Helping.
The city says about 300 volunteers are expected to be in the area on Saturday to do cleanup and get the park ready for public use is going to take about a year.
The tentative re-opening is planned for 2027.