San Jose for a Sextagenarian (Fremont, Palo Alto: real estate, renting, lofts)

[nmguy]

I moved from Palo Alto to another part of the country about 5 years ago and am thinking about returning.

I am considering returning and living in San Jose. I like go out to dinner a couple of times a week. I've got some old friends to socialize with, so the dating scene is not significant.

What part of San Jose would be appropriate for me?

TIA for any responses.

[MikeSJ]

I am about your age and lived in Fremont for about 25 years before I moved to the heart of downtown San Jose last year. Ever since 1986, downtown San Jose has had a lot of development (condos, townhouses, business high rises, and retrofitting existing buildings) and is now one of the cleanest downtowns in the US. It still has a very small downtown (about 1 square mile) but has many restarants (about 150 if you count everything), 6 theaters, 6 museums, the HP Pavillion, a lot of mom and pop shops, but is currently missing major shopping.

Downtown San Jose (broken link)
Julian Bassett Neighborhood (broken link)
Diridon Station (broken link)
Jackson-Taylor Neighborhood (broken link)

If your renting, downtown is quite expensive but if you buying, several high rise and low rise condos are currently under construction as well as resale condos and townhouses and you can probably expect that a decent price can be gotten due to the housing mess.

http://www.sjredevelopment.org/monthlyReports/housing.pdf (broken link)
SVL | Downtown San Jose Condos and Lofts | Downtown San Jose Real Estate by Silicon Valley Lofts and Condos

If you like an urban area but do not care to live downtown, Santana Row would be a good choice but is significantly more expensive than downtown and is about 5 miles from downtown. You can see the different housing in the above link and the link below shows the character of the center.

Santana Row (broken link)

If your looking for suburb living, someone else will have to give you recommendations.

[sonarrat]

Evergreen is the traditional 'retirement' community, but it doesn't really sound like that's what you're after. The Rose Garden quarter has great restaurants and probably would strike you as what Palo Alto used to be like.