Fairmont Plaza (previously the Knight-Ridder Building) is a 17-story,

skyscraper A skyscraper is a tall continuously habitable building having multiple floors. Modern sources currently define skyscrapers as being at least or in height, though there is no universally accepted definition. Skyscrapers are very tall high-ris ...

downtown San Jose Downtown San Jose is the central business district of San Jose, California. Downtown is one of the largest tech clusters in Silicon Valley, as well as the cultural and political center of San Jose. History The town was first settled in 1777. T ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. When completed in 1988, it was the tallest building in the city; it is currently the sixth. The building was designed by the

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) is an American architectural, urban planning and engineering firm. It was founded in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel A. Owings, Nathaniel Owings in Chicago, Illinois. In 1939, they were joined by engineer Jo ...

architecture firm.

History

Fairmont Plaza was completed in 1988. At the time, it was the tallest building in San Jose. San Jose's first skyscraper, the 1909, seven-story,

Garden City Bank & Trust Building A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The single feature identifying even the wildest wild garden is ''control''. The garden can incorporate bot ...

, and the 1926, seven-story,

American Trust Building American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

were razed on the site to make way for the project. In 1998, newspaper publisher

Knight Ridder Knight Ridder was an American media company, specializing in newspaper and Internet publishing. Until it was bought by McClatchy on June 27, 2006, it was the second largest newspaper publisher in the United States, with 32 daily newspaper brand ...

moved its headquarters from

Miami Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...

to the building, renaming it the Knight-Ridder Building. The move was seen as an acknowledgement of the central role that online news would play in the company's future.

The McClatchy Company The McClatchy Company, commonly referred to as simply McClatchy, is an American publishing company incorporated under Delaware's General Corporation Law and based in Sacramento, California. It operates 29 daily newspapers in fourteen states and ...

purchased Knight Ridder in 2006, but the company's sign remained at the top of the building until 2016. CBRE Global Investors purchased the building in 2012 about US$90 million.

References

{{Reflist Office buildings completed in 1988 Skyscraper office buildings in San Jose, California Skidmore, Owings & Merrill buildings