Today San Jose has among the strictest growth laws of any major U.S. city. Hamann said in 1976. Hamann and his wife, Frances, died in 1977 in the collision of two passenger jets in the Canary Islands. For the past 25 years, San Jose has tried to lure developers back to a downtown that by the late 1970s had become a sad mix of empty lots, failed shops and winos. Today, San Jose boasts the new Tech Museum of Innovation, the San Jose Arena and the Fairmont Hotel.
Plans are under way for a new city hall and a symphony building.
Entertainment downtown has thrived, but retail sales, crippled by Valley Fair and other malls, have languished. Meanwhile, Hamann's genie can never be put back in the bottle. We knew everything would grow. But it grew too fast. We couldn't even keep up with it.