For more than a year, a small army of city workers and volunteers — backed by both public and private funding — have been working to renovate Arena Green Park along the Guadalupe River. Now, with several major projects completed, San Jose leaders are trying to get the word out that this long-underused park is ready for visitors.
Arena Green, a collection of grassy fields straddling the Guadalupe river, is one of downtown San Jose’s largest open spaces. Despite its central location, the park slid into disuse in recent years. Visitors had been discouraged by its slowly crumbling infrastructure, along with the proliferation of homeless encampments, city leaders said. However, over the past two years, San Jose has joined with a number of civic leaders — including the Sharks Foundation and the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy — to launch an all out restoration effort.
“We’ve done some of the very difficult work to pull this park back to public use,” Councilmember Michael Mulcahy, whose district includes the park, said during a recent event to unveil a new park amenity. “Now it’s an opportunity to give people a reason to come out here.”
Days earlier, on March 21, his office hosted a community picnic at Arena Green as a grand unveiling of park improvements.
“It’s our responsibility to make sure that people know that the park is here, it’s available, it’s open, it’s clean, it’s safe,” Mulcahy told San José Spotlight.
In addition to offering a place for sports activities and community events, the park also operates as a green crossroads for San Jose: It’s a way station along the larger Guadalupe River Park system — which runs north and south through the center of the city — and also sits right along the path linking the SAP Center, the park’s neighbor to the west, to Little Italy and San Pedro Square, both of which lie within easy walking distance to the park’s east.
Since work began, the effort has resulted in a range of improvements, including the installation of better lighting and signs, a new pickleball court and the replacement of the park’s bike path. The city has also worked to repurpose a number of dilapidated park structures, such as an aging ranger station, which has now been demolished and transformed into open patio space.
To help aid in the restoration effort, the city tapped a host of community volunteers as well as workers with the San Jose Conservation Corps. Together, these helping hands contributed thousands of hours toward wide-ranging projects, including landscaping improvements, creek-side cleanups and new murals.
San Jose officials did not provide a full accounting of the expense related to park improvements, though the trail and lighting improvements along with the ranger station project collectively cost the city roughly $2.3 million, according to a spokesperson for Mulcahy’s office. Private donors have also provided funding for the work.
Meanwhile, Arena Green has also been a major focus of the city’s broader effort to remove homeless encampments from its waterways. The city designated the area around Guadalupe River as a “no encampment zone” in 2024, meaning the city may carry out sweeps there without the typical 72-hour notice.
New pickleball courts are among the many amenities recently added to San Jose’s Arena Green Park. Photo by Keith Menconi.
Ed Bautista, a communications manager for San Jose, said based on observations, it appears park usage is beginning to recover.
“We see people returning to bike and to jog and run and use the trails as they were meant to be,” Bautista told San José Spotlight. “This concerted effort by all the parties involved is really just the start of what we hope continues to grow.”
The Sharks hockey team, SAP Center’s prime tenant, has also played a role in the park’s restoration. Through its foundation, the organization donated $200,000 for work that included the removal of a dilapidated carousel as well as a recently completed art installation, according to team officials. The carousel structure has since been repurposed as an events pavilion.
“The underlying park was there, but to have a beautiful front door to our teal reimagination — which is the reimagination of the entire SAP Center experience — it starts at the front door, and that is the Guadalupe River Park in the Arena Green, West,” Chris Shay, a senior vice president for the team, told San José Spotlight.
With many of the most pressing physical park improvements now completed, the focus for Arena Green has turned to drawing activities and events back into the park. As one possibility, Mulcahy floated the possibility that San Jose State University might use the park for sporting events or horticultural coursework.
Ash Namdar, the interim executive director of the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy, said he is hopeful the momentum toward greater park attendance will continue.
“We really want it to be San Jose’s centralized park area,” Namdar told San José Spotlight. “There’s a lot of green space there. It’s beautiful, and we just want the community to be able to utilize it and enjoy it.”
Contact Keith Menconi at [email protected] or @KeithMenconi on X.