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Owners of the former Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, rebranded as Signia by Hilton last year, are planning to sell off about a third of the hotel’s guest rooms.

Depending on what a potential buyer does with the property, some city boosters said the change could be a positive one for the downtown area, though others are concerned about the downsizing’s effect on marketing the city for conventions and events.

Alex Stettinski, CEO of the San Jose Downtown Association, said it’s unfortunate to see a major hotel being downsized, but understands hotels are facing challenges in general.

“When I learned about it I was sad. I was like, ‘Oh my god, that was the Fairmont, that’s our iconic hotel,’” Stettinski told San José Spotlight. “But I can see that they may think that it’s going to be hard to fill 800 beds on a constant basis.”

Sam Hirbod, a real estate investor and owner of the hotel at 170 S. Market St., told The Mercury News this week he has put the 264-room southern tower up for sale, and that dozens of interested parties have toured it.

The south tower was completed in 2002, an addition made by former owner Lew Wolff, who had partnered with a Saudi Arabian crown prince to purchase the original hotel in 1996.

All guests at the Signia are currently staying in the south tower, while the remaining finishing touches on a major renovation are made to the 541-room north tower, which also includes all the hotel’s amenities such as a reimagined lobby bar and lounge, fitness center and 65,000-square-foot conference space.

Hirbod told The Mercury News the south tower under new ownership could be converted to an extended stay model, such as a “corporate apartment concept.”

Derrick Seaver, head of the San Jose Chamber of Commerce, said he can’t comment on the specific business the hotel is doing currently, but noted business travel is still significantly lower than pre-pandemic levels.

“If we’re not having the return on business travel to the area that we have traditionally had, then businesses, particularly the hospitality industry, are going to have to be nimble and that’s exactly what they’re looking at,” Seaver told San José Spotlight.

He thinks a long-term stay model could benefit the downtown area, especially if the hotel isn’t filling up near capacity on a regular basis.

“The goal is vibrancy, to have as many people down here as often as possible,” Seaver said. “And if the current use of this facility doesn’t suit that, and there is another best use of that facility to suit that, we certainly would be optimistic that they can deliver on that promise.”

Hirbod did not respond to requests for comment. A Hilton spokesperson said the company will continue to manage the hotel property.

“We remain fully committed to welcoming guests with the quality service and signature hospitality experience they have come to enjoy,” the spokesperson said.

John LaFortune, president and CEO of Team San Jose, a destination marketing organization aimed at bringing visitors to the city, said the three-year average occupancy rate in downtown hotels is about 56% currently, about 20% less than pre-pandemic levels.

Occupancy rates downtown aren’t expected to rebound until at least 2025, and LaFortune said losing a large chunk of rooms will slow that recovery, and hurt the overall visitor economy, especially for booking events at the nearby convention center.

“Convention booking is contingent on securing available room blocks for attendees. If there are less bookable rooms, there are less conventions,” LaFortune told San José Spotlight. “A loss in available group rooms will further damage downtown vibrancy and will push convention center group rooms to the airport or outskirts of the city, making San Jose more difficult to sell.”

If fewer conventions come to the area, LaFortune also said it could lead to a decrease in overall hotel rates in the city, compounding the potential impact as the city might lose out on more hotel taxes.

Stettinski said he’s glad the north tower, the larger portion of the hotel, will remain, and that it’s still a decent size with 541 rooms. He also thinks an extended stay model could work for the south tower and the downtown area.

“If we can fill this tower with people who do contract work here in the area and stay for six months, or even a year, that brings a lot of vitality and vibrancy to downtown,” he said. “These people will develop habits and routines that reflect those of residents.”

It’s not clear how soon the tower could sell, nor who the buyer might be. Hirbod presented the possible sale as a win-win for the city. Despite being optimistic, Stettinski said the city will have to wait and see.

“It remains to be seen who the buyer will be and what they are going to be doing with that tower,” he said. “You are always taking a chance with a sale, we can only hope for the best.”

They may not be able to reach the top shelf of a pantry without help, but the eight elementary school students taking part in the finals of the Future Chefs Challenge for San Jose Unified School District this week sure can cook.

The young chefs — all in third or fourth grade — put together their favorite dishes Tuesday at Gunderson High School for a panel of judges with hopes of moving onto the next stage of the national competition, which is sponsored by Sodexo, the food service company that manages San Jose Unified’s school cafeterias.

Cruz Skinner, a 10-year-old fourth-grader from Schallenberger Elementary, took first place in the contest with “Cruz’s ZuccCorn Fritters with Lemon Dill Dipping Sauce.” Second and third place went to a pair of fourth-graders at Graystone Elementary: Rohan Kedlaya, who made “CAULiforIndian Potatoez,” and Jacob Walsh, who made a “Persimmon Pop Salad.” Back when I was in fourth grade, I think my best dish was frozen waffles — and I wouldn’t have come up with as good a name for them, either.

Cruz Skinner, 10, a fourth-grader from Schallenberger Elementary, prepares her dish called "Cruz’s ZuccCorn Fritters with Lemon Dill Dipping Sauce" for the National Future Chefs Challenge at Gunderson High School in San Jose, Calif., on Tuesday, March 21, 2023. Eight young finalists from the San José Unified School District compete to win and represent San José Unified at the regional contest. Cruz would win the contest. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)

Ben Skinner, Cruz’s dad, said her dish was a version of a recipe that her great-grandmother used to make. “Our big Italian family still makes them, and Cruz put her own spin on the dish,” he said, adding that the family started her cooking when she was around 3 and she makes tons of homemade pasta and breads.

The finalists were selected from a pool of nearly 90 applicants, and their dishes were judged on originality, healthy attributes, ease of preparation, kid-friendliness, taste and presentation. Cruz’s recipe will now be entered to represent San Jose Unified in a regional contest next month against 68 others that’ll be judged by four professional chefs.

TELLING HERSTORY AT HISTORY PARK: Mosaic America and History San Jose are teaming up this weekend to host “Belonging: Celebrating Community, Heritage, and HERstories,” an event at History Park that honors the achievements and contributions of women in the Santa Clara Valley. The free festival, which runs from noon to 4 p.m. Sunday, will spotlight female performers and storytellers, including Anne Marie Todd, Cassie Kifer, Wendy Rouse, Beth Kile and Tricia Creason-Valencia.

There also will be performances by Opera San Jose, Kawayan Folk Arts, Raíces de México, Tabia African American Theatre and many others, as well as kid-friendly craft activities and a Congolese dance and music workshop. Go to www.historysanjose.org for more details.

BACK TO THE SIXTIES: The Los Altos History Museum is taking a look back at the decade following the city’s 1952 incorporation with a new exhibit “One Brief Shining Moment: JFK’s Camelot in Early Los Altos,” which opened Thursday and runs through June 11.

Drawing parallels to the image of President Kennedy’s administration as an ideal government, Exhibition Curator Jordan Grealish said, “Hopes for a government where people of many different talents came together to serve the public with honor and high ideals were also reflected in the early days of Los Altos.”

The exhibition includes JFK memorabilia, along with documents and photos from Los Altos in the early 1960s, and is right in line with the museum’s April 1 fundraiser, “Dancing through the Decades: The Iconic Camelot Decade.” Expect a healthy portion of music and decor from the era, along with wine, cocktails and a four-course meal (which can go with any decade). The deadline to purchase tickets is March 26, so head to losaltoshistory.org/Decades60s if you’re interested.

OddsShopper’s Expert NHL AI walks you through the best betting odds, trends and free predictions for the Flames’s matchup versus the Sharks. The San Jose Sharks will be on the road Saturday early afternoon to take on the Calgary Flames. The San Jose Sharks come into Saturday as the underdog, with Calgary Flames favored to win. The first puck drops at 3/25/2023 4:00 PM ET.

Sharks – Flames Betting Odds

The Calgary Flames are favored in this matchup with -305 odds for the moneyline and -120 odds for the -1.5 puck line on Unibet. The San Jose Sharks are +1.5 goal underdogs, with -103 odds and +235 odds for the moneyline in this matchup vs the Calgary Flames.

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Behind the storefront windows of the former Zanotto’s grocery store in San José sits a new gallery with an elongated, narrow design — not unlike an alley. Its name, then, is fitting: Chopsticks Alley Gallery, which showcases the work of emerging and established Southeast Asian artists.

Inside, the current solo exhibition from Santa Rosa designer Tuan Tran features haute couture designs that fuse Vietnamese culture and recycled materials. Sculptures made from electrical wire echo the traditional weaves of fishing nets. A luminescent dress pays homage to powerful female warriors like the Trung Sisters, who successfully rebelled against the Chinese Han in 40 A.D.

In fact, each beautiful and skillfully crafted piece in Mẹ Earth: Past, Present, Future tells a story of Vietnam’s rich heritage and the ingenuity of its people. It’s exactly the type of show that Trami Cron, the gallery’s founder and executive director, wants to see more of in San José.

Born to artistic parents in Saigon toward the end of the Vietnam War, Cron has taken an indirect path to organizing visual art exhibitions. “My mom was always worried about the ‘starving artist’ path for me and encouraged me towards medicine or law,” she explains.

Cron followed the corporate track for a few years, but ultimately left her job in pharmaceutical and medical device sales to pursue her own passions. She’s since become an important advocate for San José’s Southeast Asian residents, a demographic that makes up 18% of the city’s population.

Chopsticks Alley began as an online foodie group, which Cron formed to share Vietnamese recipes and to promote her 2016 book, VietnamEazy: A Novel About Mothers, Daughters and Food. Explaining the name, Cron notes that “alleys in Asia aren’t scary places like here. Alleys are where things happen; they are busy places where people get together over food, gamble, and do other fun stuff.”

As the group grew to 3,500 members, it expanded to include cook-offs, food contests to raise money for unhoused children, and a publication for young people to learn more about their Vietnamese culture.

Then, in 2016, Cron met with the San José Museum of Art, which had received a grant for a Vietnamese community outreach initiative. Cron quickly realized that Southeast Asian artists were underrepresented at the institution, and accepted a position as project coordinator. Since making the jump into visual arts, she has coordinated two exhibitions per year, in partnership with South Bay venues like ArtObject Gallery, Evergreen College and the Triton Museum.

“We just traveled to places, and in many ways it worked out because we brought our work to where the people are,” Cron recalls. “And because of those pop-up exhibits, people learned about us and already knew who we were when we opened this gallery.”

Cron’s curatorial vision for the Chopsticks Alley Gallery is to bring emerging artists together with established elders, bridging the generational gap in the Southeast Asian community. Cron believes that elders’ work is often overlooked or thought of as a hobby, while the younger generation is pushed away from their artistic passions towards careers in engineering and other practical fields.

This de-emphasis on art leads to a lack of representation, Cron explains. “You get to see a lot of voices from other communities, but none from the Southeast Asian perspective — because we’re not allowed to make art,” she points out.

Additionally, Cron believes the generational gap in the Southeast Asian community has left its youth feeling distant from their culture and heritage. “I introduce the elders so that the young people know — ‘Look, we’ve always been here, we’ve always created art’ — and for the older folks to see how amazing the young people are,” she says.

Although the focus at Chopsticks Alley is on Southeast Asian artists, the gallery’s first exhibit, which opened Dec. 2, 2022, Xanh / Are you feeling blue?, included artists from the broader community — something Cron plans to do annually.

As the gallery continues to develop its program, Cron is committed to mentoring young art administrators who can stay with the gallery in leadership roles. She hopes to create a strong foundation for Chopsticks Alley before she seeks out her next passion project: mentoring women professionals in achieving work-life balance and overall well-being.

‘Mẹ Earth: Past, Present, Future’ is on view through May 21, 2023. Details here.

An Irish play created by a former San Jose mayor has finally premiered in California, three years after the Covid-19 pandemic first delayed its US launch.

‘A Statue for Ballybunion’ was written by former Mayor Tom McEnery, who lived in Co Kerry for several months in the 1960s.

The comedy is based on the true story of a group of Ballybunion residents who hatched a plan in 1998 to unveil the world’s first statue of then US President Bill Clinton before his planned visit to Co Kerry.

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The play follows the residents as they navigate not only issues surrounding the visit but also an unexpected glitch with their statue.

“Well-publicized events in the Oval Office with a certain intern put Clinton’s visit to the Kingdom of Kerry in jeopardy. As if that were not enough, something unexpected has happened to the statue,” the plays synopsis reads.

“How will this affect events in Ballybunion as it awaits immortality on the world stage?”

McEnery first penned the tale as a short story and said it was inspired by his interest in Irish history.

“My grandparents emigrated from Ireland at the dawn of the 20th century. When I first went to Ireland myself in the ’60s and began to immerse myself in her history with my MA thesis on Irish nationalism, I discovered an equal interest in those that stayed behind and why,” McEnery said.

“This story concerns a man and his home. This town on the edge of the Atlantic is fighting for its self-respect and very survival.

“This struggle mirrors the one Ireland faced then and in some ways always has. Here we enter a strange but oddly familiar place where things are not always as they seem. As in all such stories, there is a real humor in the lives of many of the characters and incidents as well as a deep sadness.”

‘A Statue for Ballybunion’ is produced by Kilnasheen Productions in partnership with Guggenheim Entertianmwnt and is directed by Jeff Bracco.

It was due to premiere in San Jose in 2020, but the plans were upended by the pandemic.

The play premeiered in Listowel last year and finally made it to the US stage at the San Jose Playhouse right before St Patrick’s Day, on March 16.

The playhouse said: “Tom has created what is described as a ‘true Irish comedy’, a comedic piece that resonates not just with the local Irish and its diaspora, but shines a spotlight on a time in the recent past that has a gentle truth, demonstrates a steely determination by a local group, and is presented with a large dollop of humor, unique to the Irish. This is a story that is as endearing as it is engaging.”

Tickets for the play, which runs until March 26, can be purchased on www.sanjoseplayhouse.org from $45 to $55.

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