Hotel Clariana

Hotel Clariana occupies the former YMCA building at the corner of East Santa Clara and South 3rd streets in downtown San Jose. It opened in 2017 with 44 rooms, after a conversion that took about two years and kept the Beaux-Arts facade while rebuilding the interior. It had never been a hotel before.

The place

The hotel sits at the southeast corner of East Santa Clara Street and South 3rd Street, in the San Jose Downtown Commercial Historic District. The city's planning file puts it there, and most records give the address as 100 East Santa Clara Street, though the visitor bureau's page prints 100 W Santa Clara.

The convention center and the downtown core are within walking distance. On-site parking is free, which is unusual for a downtown San Jose address.

The concept

William E. Binder, a local architect, designed the building in the Beaux-Arts style for the Young Men's Christian Association, which finished it in 1913 as its main facility. It held a billiards room, a reading room, an assembly room, a swimming pool and 75 dormitory rooms for rent. Those rooms mattered during the First World War, when hundreds of soldiers passed through town. The YMCA stayed until 1959.

After RSTP Investments acquired the building in 2009, it housed the Redevelopment Agency's Entrepreneur Center before the hotel conversion. The building is listed in the National Register of Historic Places as a contributing structure of the downtown district.

A city permit file describes a later phase that would add 60 or so rooms for a total above 100, and a further amendment proposed a seven-story residential tower. Nothing found confirms either was built.

Dining & wellness

The hotel's listing with the visitor bureau names no restaurant. It lists a gift shop, a free business center, a fitness center and lobby entertainment, and an on-site concierge. Guests eat in the surrounding downtown.