WELCOME TO MILPITAS

Milpitas is a city in Santa Clara County, California. It is located with San Jose to its south and Fremont to its north, at the eastern end of State Route 237 and generally between Interstates 680 and 880 which run roughly north/south through the city. With Alameda County bordering directly on the north, Milpitas sits in the extreme northeast section of the South Bay, bordering the East Bay and Fremont. Milpitas is also located within the Silicon Valley. The corporate headquarters of Maxtor, LSI Logic, Solectron, Adaptec, Intersil, Cisco Systems and SanDisk sit within the industrial zones of Milpitas.

CULTURE AND RECREATION

Milpitas residents enjoy various visual and performing arts. The Milpitas Alliance for the Arts, founded in 1997, is an organization which promotes and funds murals, plays, sculptures, and many other forms of art. The "Art in Your Park" project has put many sculptures in local Milpitas parks, including a ceramic tower in Hillcrest Park, a sundial in Augustine Park, and a historical memorial in Murphy Park. The Celebrate Milpitas Festival is held annually every August, featuring vendors of crafts-type merchandise and providing local talent with a performance venue while selling visitors samplings of exotics like garlic fries or lumpia and even offerings from one or two Californian wineries.

The suburb offers a rich variety of food options, including sit-down restaurants and fast food. With a large manufacturing workforce, Milpitas has many fast food restaurants and other regional/national brand franchised eateries such as McDonalds, Carl's Jr., Burger King, Taco Bell, Applebee's, Marie Calendar, and Wienerschnitzel allowing corporate employees to get a quick lunch and return to work. For the coffee lover, there are eight Starbucks outlets, drive through Caffino's, and a few independent shops like Ola's or Cafe Roma around the city.

The large recreational and community services in Milpitas gives it a reputation as having one of the South Bay's best recreational programs. The Milpitas Sports Center on Calaveras Road hosts a variety of sports, including swimming, tennis, soccer, and baseball. The Milpitas Recreational Services Department offers a wide range of tutors and coaches in basketball, dancing, karate, and other leisure activities. The Miliptas Teen Center and the Milpitas Senior Center also provide residents with fun, activities, and educational opportunities.

Shopping Super Centers

Milpitas is also home to the largest Bay Area enclosed shopping mall (in terms of land area), the Great Mall of the Bay Area. Great Mall's premises is the conversion of a Ford automobile assembly plant that shut down in the 1970s as a corporate cost-cutting measure. Great Mall houses hundreds of brand name stores: Abercrombie and Fitch, Gap, Old Navy, Sears, Dave & Busters, etc.

A large outdoor shopping center called Milpitas Square is anchored by the 99 Ranch Market west of Interstate 880. It is reportedly the largest Asian-oriented plaza in the nation.

Other Milpitas shopping centers and plazas include Milpitas Town Center, Jacklin Square, McCarthy Ranch, Parktown Plaza, Beresford Square, and the City Square.

There is one car dealership in Milpitas. It is Piercey Toyota covering a vast area near Great Mall Parkway and Interstate 880. There are plans for a second dealership to open next to the Piercey site by 2010.

In the past, Milpitas had a very different culture from that of its modern suburban state. As late as the 1950s, Milpitas was an unincorporated rural town with the Midtown district on Main Street as its main center of business and social activities. Back then, many people knew each other and walked only one or two blocks to familiar workplaces. Many old businesses, such as Main Street Gas (operated by the Azorean Spangler brothers), Smith's Corner Saloon, and Kozy Kitchen were well-known places which were favorite spots for old-timers to chat or stop by. The Cracolice Building was one of the oldest commercial buildings in Milpitas and was the site of many political conventions and meetings. "As Milpitas Goes, So Goes the State" used to be a popular slogan around the town. Most of the land now within modern-day Milpitas' boundaries were used for strawberry, asparagus, apricot, and potato cultivation until the postwar boom during the 1950s and 1960s.

Parks

Ed R. Levin County Park is the largest county regional park near Milpitas. The County of Santa Clara Parks and Recreation Department runs the park. Monument Peak can be accessed through trails that lead north through the county park. The park also provides facilities for hang gliding and paragliding and includes a newly built dog park that was a joint effort by the county and the city of Milpitas. Two golf courses, Spring Valley Golf Course and Summitpointe Golf Course, are located in the Milpitas foothills. Both have expensive gated residential developments located adjacent to them. Milpitas itself has 17 traditional neighborhood parks which are generally 3 to 10 acres (12,000 to 40,000 m²). There also is a sports complex and sports parks with baseball and tennis play areas fenced off. There are also smaller parks of less than 3 acres (12,000 m2) scattered in newer developments. Milpitas has begun to develop the San Francisco Water District's Hetch Hetchy right-of-way as park land in lieu of using land from new high density residential developments adjacent to it. Together, these parks total 166 acres (670,000 m2) of land area or less than 2% of the city's acreage. The ratio of resident to park land in Milpitas is one of the highest in the San Francisco Bay area.