About 15 years ago, the biggest earthquake to hit the San Francisco Bay Area in recent memory threatened to delay the grand opening of the Pruneyard's newest coffee shop.

On Oct. 17, 1989, Alana Cimolino and the rest of the Campbell Coffee Roasting Company's maiden crew were setting up shop in their new digs when the Loma Prieta earthquake, measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale, struck Northern California.

When the shaking was all said and done, the damage that the force of nature suddenly wreaked upon the Pruneyard was substantial, Cimolino says. Shops all around the shopping complex had to close for a while to nurse their wounds, as did the smallest of the Pruneyard Tower buildings. But the fledgling coffee shop where she would work for the next 15 years would not be deterred from opening.

"Luckily, we were spared," says Cimolino, the cafe's longest employee. "We had no damage."

The cafe not only opened four days later as scheduled, but it grew into one of the première coffee shops in the South Bay, predating the 1991 push into California of the Seattle-based coffee juggernaut Starbucks.

"Everyone was excited about the new coffee shop in the Pruneyard," Cimolino says. "We were successful right from the beginning."

And for years after the grand opening, in every season and in all types of weather, the coffeehouse was busy, she says. It even survived through the early to mid-1990s when the Pruneyard was considered a "ghost town," as well as the dot-com boom and bust. Through time, by dint of its longevity and popularity, the Campbell Coffee Roasting Co. became an institution for Pruneyard customers and for coffee lovers all over the Bay Area.

But where the awesome power of nature failed to keep the cafe from starting its new life, the dynamic power of the marketplace will keep it from continuing.

On March 19, 2004, Equity Office Partners, the largest commercial property management firm in the country and the landlord of the Pruneyard Shopping Center, informed the cafe's general manager, Chris Choi, that his current lease would not be renewed after it expires Aug. 31.

Choi—the second owner of the business, who took over five years ago—says Equity Office Partners told him he was "underperforming," and that it was interested in having a franchise coffee shop move in.

But Equity Office Partners' Kathy Tate, managing director of the Pruneyard property, says that is only half true: he was underperforming, but a franchise coffee shop isn't necessarily in the cards. She's says the firm won't renew Choi's lease but is looking at the possibility of renting the space to another independent coffee shop.

"We're looking at this more as an upgrade to the existing coffee operations," she says.

However, she adds, Equity Office Partners hasn't decided on a new tenant.

Tate says Equity Office Partners every year hires a consulting firm to conduct "customer intercept" surveys to determine what customers like and dislike about the mall and what would they like changed.

"The survey is pretty comprehensive," she says. "We try to find out who our typical customer is, how many stores they visit and how much they spend during a typical shopping trip."

She says these surveys and the decisions that Equity Office Partners makes with the information garnered in them have been instrumental in enabling the property manager to transform the once-underutilized mall into the vibrant, active shopping center that the Pruneyard has become. She also says that the results of a recent survey showed that many customers didn't feel that the quality of the cafe was up to par with that of other businesses in the Pruneyard.

But Choi says he isn't convinced.

"If I've been paying rent for five years and was never late—how can I be underperforming?" he says, while slowly finishing preparations for the order of one of his afternoon customers.

A customer-service questionnaire that he wrote and left for people to fill out in his cafe was signed by 116 of his customers between Feb. 18 and March 12 and indicated to him that his customers are highly satisfied with what he's doing.

On a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the best, his cafe received an average score of 8.93 for the quality of coffee provided and a 9.54 for the quality of service rendered.

"I'm just heartbroken," Choi says. "I don't understand what Equity Office is talking about. But what can I do? I'm just a small-business man."

He says he gave the results to Equity Office Partners, but the landlord didn't reply.

Equity Office Partners' decision not to renew Choi's lease is unpopular among the cafe's customers.

Choi shows off a stack of about 15 letters from customers addressed and written to Equity Office Partners urging the property manager to renew the lease. Many of the customers have been coming to the Campbell Coffee Roasting Company for years and fear that the cafe's closure will mean a corporate coffee shop will take its place.

"I think it sucks," says Bob Hargrove, a mortgage broker who works in the nearby Pruneyard Towers. "It's just another case of the landlord wanting to go to the corporate structure. They're asking the local guy who makes the local roast to leave."

Hargrove says he's been coming to the cafe almost every workday since 1991. Despite what Equity Office Partners' survey might say, he says the quality of service that the crew ensures and the attention to detail that Choi puts into his work is excellent.

Moreover, he says, the friendly, family-like atmosphere Choi maintains is a welcome change of scene from the franchise coffee shops.

Customer Frank Mitchell agrees. An employee of American Express, also in the Pruneyard Towers, he's been coming to the cafe a few times a week for five years.

"Equity Office just doesn't understand the dynamic here," he says. "They understand the big bucks, but they don't seem to realize what the people need."

The personable service people get from the family-owned business is rare these days, he says. But Choi knows almost every one of his customers' names and greets them all when they come in. His employees also remember the customers' orders so they can make them without having the customers ask.

"People appreciate that," Mitchell says. "It's a whole different dynamic [from the corporate coffee shops]. And everyone I talk to says they're bummed he has to leave."

Hargrove and Mitchell are part of the cafe's daytime clientele, which is mostly made up of shirt-and-tie businessmen who work in the Pruneyard Towers, says Cimolino. But the evening crowd can get much different.

"We get a whole different crowd at night," she says. "It's like we have two different coffee shops in one."

And customers from both crowds, when hearing of the impending closure, say they're disappointed.

"Well, this just means one less cool coffee shop to go to," says soon-to-be lawyer Sean Omderick.

Throughout his undergraduate and law-school years, he came to the coffee shop often to study because the interior of the cafe was almost always quiet, he says. And outside, with all of its lights, benches and trees, the eclectic mix of people was always an interesting sight.

People watching also attracts 32-year-old writer Jonathan Clonts from Morgan Hill to the cafe. On a cool summer evening, he sits outside in the courtyard, reading a book, enjoying a smoke and checking out the people coming and going all around him.

Nearby, a long-haired man strums a guitar on a bench by a tree, a mother chats with her friend as she holds a baby in her arms and a group of teenage girls talk loudly to one another about unfaithful boyfriends, bad books and problems at home.

"You can't find too many good courtyard coffee shops like this in the San Jose area anymore," he says, gesturing to the scene around him.

Because he is relatively new to the Campbell Coffee Roasting Company, he sees the closing of the cafe not as a personal loss, but as a loss of something much larger to the community.

"It's a big problem when corporations move out the small businesses," he laments quietly. "Places like this lose their character, originality and uniqueness when that happens."

Despite the fact that Choi has known about the expiration of the lease since March, and despite the fact that the expiration date is only a few weeks away, some of his employees have only heard of the coming closure through rumors.

"I haven't told everyone yet," Choi says, looking down at a mug behind the counter. "I just don't have the heart to tell anyone yet."

One person who does know about it is Cimolino, who has spent more than a decade and a half working for two different owners in the cafe.

"I just hate to see the place close down," she says. "It's a mistake for the Pruneyard. People really like us here, and they really like the mom-and-pop atmosphere."

"But," she says, "I guess that's progress."