|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Four new sustainability-focused, fair-trade apparel and homegoods stores and a handcrafted ice cream shop are the newest additions to Town & Country Village, the Palo Alto shopping center announced Wednesday, March 22.
The new stores, Faherty, Pact, Coyuchi and Evereve, and The Penny Ice Creamery, enter the retail scene in an improved business climate at the 70-year-old center, located at 855 El Camino Real and Embarcadero Road. Patronage has increased more than 13% since the end of the pandemic lockdown in 2021, the center stated in a press release.
Two existing businesses, eatery Gott’s Roadside and “weekend wear” retailer Marine Layer, are also expanding as the outdoor shopping center continues its post-pandemic rebound.
Among the new retailers, Evereve, which opened this month next to the Athleta store, is one of the largest retailers at Town & Country Village with a 4,000-square-foot space; it sells more than 150 clothing brands.
New York-based Faherty, which offers high-quality clothing for men, women and children, opened Feb. 24 two doors down from Evereve. The store’s outdoor-lifestyle wear includes clothing created by Native American designers, which is part of a company initiative to support indigenous culture and communities.
Organic clothing manufacturer Pact opened its doors on Dec. 22, its second Bay Area location.
Point Reyes-based Coyuchi, which sells all-organic loungewear, pajamas, bedding, linens, pillows and baby items, opened Nov. 22.
In the culinary vein, The Penny Ice Creamery, which has four locations in Santa Cruz County, will open at Town & Country this spring. The store offers cones with hand-torched marshmallow fluff topping. Ice cream flavors are ever evolving, ranging from Tahitian vanilla to Earl Grey tea, fresh mint chip, Verve coffee, chocolate almond praline and bourbon bacon chocolate.
The product is made from scratch with organic and sustainably grown ingredients from local farms. The company pasteurizes its own milk for total control of the ice cream’s quality.
“I know that there’s a lot of people that appreciate good food, and food that has a great intention that goes into it,” co-owner Zach Davis said in February.
He noted that the hyperlocal ingredients are added thoughtfully to maximize flavor. The fresh mint, for example, is added to the ice cream when it is chilled after pasteurization to avoid bitterness.
Kendra Baker, also owner and pastry chef, said that Palo Alto families who visited their Santa Cruz locations have been encouraging them to open a store on the Peninsula.
“We feel a kinship with the area in the way people appreciate high quality food, seasonal flavors, and responsible sourcing. There’s a celebration of handcrafted products and we want to be part of that celebration,” she said.
Of the two stores that are expanding, Marine Layer, a San Francisco-based casualwear brand that originally opened at Town & Country Village in 2015, added 900 square feet for a total of 1,800 square feet. Gott’s Roadside eatery plans to expand its space by 605 square feet this spring.
Brian Bokman, retail broker for Town & Country Village, said the center is excited to have these stores because they’re in line with what Peninsula residents and families want: products that are “manufactured with the planet’s health in mind.”
Town & Country has evolved from a 1950s shopping mall to a modern lifestyle, activity and retail center with 56 retail shops. The center’s planned community events this spring and summer will include its annual Bunny Hop, Sidewalk Sales and back-to-school promotions, the center stated.
Meanwhile, California Ave languishes with many vacant lots . . . . The property owners could figure this out if they wanted to. They need to act together as more than one place needs to open to create the kind of interest and traffic needed to sustain it. Why go to Cal Ave with one store, when you can go to Town and Country and shop several plus have reasonably priced places to eat or have coffee? Property owners on Cal Ave appear to prefer to leave their stores vacant and take the loss on their income taxes, and then wait until they think they can get the top dollar rents they used to command at the height of business pre-pandemic. Very sad to see what that stretch has become. The only thing that makes Town & Country less interesting is the craziness of the traffic through the center and the difficulty of finding parking at some times of the day — even with all of the parking spaces they have. It is a very nice environment — not drab and run down like Cal Ave.
Speaking of the Cal Ave business district, one only has to look at all the empty stores that once housed dry cleaners and framers and other resident-serving businesses because the greedy landlords would rather stay empty than help their former long-term tenants.
Gotta wonder what if anything our “retail consultant” or Chamber of Connerce is doing besides conducting meaningless surveys about how many square feet if retail we “deserve”!
The longer Cal Ave stores are vacant the stronger the lobby from the Chamber of Commerce and commercial property owners to expand council’s long list of more profitable businesses that can replace and erode our traditional retail locations. Using the species argument these so called “retail-like” businesses will enhance the viability of adjacent real retail. But in reality erode our traditional retail areas because successful retail needs critical mass to attract shoppers. An ever downward spiral but which improves the bottom line for the property owners whose interest does not align with the city’s need for sales tax revenue.
The most recent example being when former council member Liz Kniss successfully lobbied for fitness studios be allowed to replace traditional retail. We all saw what happened to Cal Ave after council then added fitness studios as another category of “retail-like” businesses that occupy former retail locations.
A more recent example being former council member Cormack unsuccessful attempt to lobby for Title Companies to be added to the list of businesses allowed to replace traditional retail.
To say nothing of city hall’s apparent support for the application from the owners of Town and Country Village to begin to replace some of their retail with presumably more profitable medical practices.
Cal Ave’s businesses would do better if cars could come down their street and drivers and pedestrians could see the businesses. They are obscured now by tents and chairs and plants. It’s a mess. Is it fun to sit outside and eat? Sure, but it’s killing businesses and making it less safe for those headed to the train station AND those adults and young bikers who need east/west access. Egress and ingress were already challenging before the street was closed. Now it’s horrible, so of course many avoid it and go elsewhere to shop and eat. We need to get Cal Ave back to its pre-pandemic normal with parking in front of businesses and clear sight lines down the road.
Speaking of Town & Country and Ms Cormack, who can forget her transparent and insistent lobbying to convert Town ^ & Country to “medical retail” weeks before the pandemic lockdown ended. She and the Planning Department were in such a rush to destroy one of the few remaining shopping centers that they didn’t even bother to define “medical retail” and how much sales tax revenue PA would lose.
For once sanity prevailed.
I am pleased the center is doing well. But, I can’t say that any of these new businesses will draw me in. For some reason, these seem to be carbon copies of each other and not really what I would call useful retail.
Trader Joes and Paly students and their families are the likely customers, as well as Stanford students.
I miss the useful Charleston Plaza stores.
Scott’s Chowder House will be another new Town & Country shop. I’m not sure when it will open. It will be in the former location of the Village Cheese Shop.
https://whatnowsf.com/scotts-chowder-house-making-palo-alto-debut/