The Endangered 8: 2024 

Forman’s Arena once stood at the center of San Jose’s sporting world, hosting wildly-popular boxing and wrestling matches weekly from 1926 through the late 1930s. Mere steps away from today’s SAP Center, the former arena could be reborn as a beer garden or other fan attraction linking SAP to Little Italy and Downtown along a planned “Sharks Way” pedestrian corridor. Instead, the City is slated to bulldoze this Candidate City Landmark for a temporary surface parking lot that will irrevocably marr this pedestrian way and the adjacent Guadalupe River Park. With a more strategic redesign, the site could easily accommodate a significant parking lot and keep Forman’s Arena in place for a future rebirth.

UPDATE MARCH 2025

A fire destroyed Forman's Arena on March 20, 2025. Though the building was already scheduled for demolition, an effort to salvage the building's intact trusses and and portions of a historic ghost sign was underway-- these materials have now been destoyed. The City-owned property was left unsecured and unmaintained for more than a year prior to the fire-- a clear and tragic case of demolition by neglect.  This latest blaze followed numerous other fires on the property over the last year, including one in September 2024 that destroyed an adjacent historic cottage. 

MEDIA COVERAGE

ABC7 News: "'Predictable and preventable': Fire destroys SJ warehouse known for boxing matches in early 1900s," March 20, 2025

KTVU Fox 2: "Preservationists angry historic San Jose buildings to be demolished for parking lot," June 24, 2023

Mercury News: "Plan to demolish historic San Jose sites for temporary SAP Center parking draws outrage," June 23, 2023