The Cupertino Courier

Photograph by Robert Scheer

Anh Duong, owner of Cupertino Village's Golden Nails, applies a set of acrylics to a customer.

Center of Attention

Cupertino Village shopping center comes to life

By Pam Marino

Two years ago Cupertino Village was just another aging shopping center with an uncertain future.

Despite its location at the major intersection of Homestead and Wolfe roads right on the border of Cupertino and Sunnyvale, anchor stores rotated out of the center's largest retail space, and small businesses were struggling to stay afloat as more and more customers shopped elsewhere.

But business is beginning to look up at the center. The 99 Ranch Market is regularly busy, and most of the businesses are open in the once sparsely populated center.

Currently near the end of a $6 million remodeling job, the owners are projecting a possible $30 million in business each year once the center is fully operational. And that could mean as much as $300,000 a year in sales-tax revenue for Cupertino, according to one estimate.

Cupertino Village has been reborn--not as a traditional or typical American shopping center, but as a new type of "niche" shopping center catering to Silicon Valley's growing Asian population.

"We saw a demand here," said Susanna Pau, one of the owners of Sand Hill Property Company, which owns the center. She and her husband, Peter, were drawn to Cupertino because of its Asian American population of 30 percent, she said. They were drawn to Cupertino Village because of its proximity to Highway 280, allowing easy access for shoppers coming from as far away as San Mateo.

The husband-and-wife team came to the United States 30 years ago and were educated at Stanford and UC-Berkeley. Over the years they have redeveloped other shopping centers in the Bay Area; most recently they have been renovating Fashion Island in San Mateo. According to Pau, they have developed more than one million square feet of retail shopping space. However, she said, every one of those centers included nationally recognized chains such as Target and Home Depot. That is, until Cupertino Village.

Asian-focused shopping centers are nothing new. But there is a new breed of Asian centers developing in North America. Here in Silicon Valley, there are three centers, including Cupertino Village, that are anchored by a 99 Ranch Market, the largest chain of Asian supermarkets in the United States. The other two centers are located in Milpitas and San Jose.

The difference in these new centers is in the people they cater to, Pau said.

"This is second generation," Pau said referring to second-generation Asian Americans. "The first-generation [consumers] shop in Chinatown in San Francisco."

Pau said older Chinese-Americans prefer shopping in Chinatown because they generally speak only Chinese and can communicate easily with merchants there. Chinatown carries many of the items, direct from China, that the older shoppers want.

But second- and third-generation Asian Americans want something different, Pau said.

"They are highly educated and Westernized," she said, adding that they were brought up "the Asian way" but desire a more Western lifestyle.

She said the image of the traditional Chinatown among younger Asians is that it is dirty; they want everything "very clean." Shopping centers such as Cupertino Village, Pau said, offer the best of both worlds: Asian products as well as Western products, but in a Western-type shopping atmosphere.

But it is not just an Asian clientele that Cupertino Village is after, Pau said. When the center is completed this summer, it will have 10 restaurants representing a wide variety of Asian cuisine. Owners are eager to attract the more than 7,000 employees of neighboring Hewlett-Packard and Tandem Corp. to the center for weekday lunches. And they want residents from Cupertino, Sunnyvale and other nearby cities to come for dinner throughout the week.

This weekend the center has its first Chinese New Year celebration planned, delayed a week because of the rain, and the hopes are that people of a variety of races will come for a chance to win prizes in a drawing and to enjoy the entertainment. The celebration is from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with Mayor Michael Chang and Councilmember John Statton performing a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 11 a.m. this Saturday, Feb. 14.

"It's one way of opening up that center to the broader community," said Statton, who is also executive director of the Cuper-tino Chamber of Com-merce. Pointing to other annual Chinese New Year celebrations in cities such as Mountain View, Statton said events like it "add to the quality of the community."

According to Pau, space at the center is 95 percent leased. Tenant improvements take time, however, so all stores will not be fully occupied until June.

"Many stores are still under construction. Sometimes it takes six months to do tenant improvements and get permits from the city," Pau said.

Of the 38 stores in the center, 27 are open for business. Some never left when improvements began in 1996, such as the Duke of Edinburgh, Bank of the West, Farmers Insurance and Village Dry Cleaners. The center began filling up slowly last year, with 99 Ranch Market leading the way. "Wherever they go, merchants follow," Pau said.

Pau said she is very excited about the opening this June of the center's largest restaurant, the Joy Luck Place. At 10,000 square feet, it will occupy one-tenth of the center's total floor space. The restaurant will have two sections, one for fine dining and the other for casual dining. It will also have banquet facilities. She said Asian families from this area currently travel up the Peninsula to hold large wedding banquets and other parties. There is very little banquet space available at South Bay Asian restaurants, Pau added.

But like every birthing process, the transformation of Cupertino Village has not been without its labor pains.

When Sand Hill took over the center two years ago, several tenants chose to leave because rents increased and the center was scheduled for an intensive renovation.

Linda Cayot, former owner of Café Gourmet, tried to ride out the renovations, but her business failed in July of 1997, she said, because her customer base dropped off. Many of her customers believed the center was closed, she said, despite signs along the roadway stating otherwise. She also faulted Pau's company for not advertising in English-language newspapers, to let customers know that the center was still open.

Pau said that the company tried to help some of the existing businesses with advice and by negotiating rents, offering a 10 percent discount on new rents to those who stayed.

She blamed the lengthy renovation on the fact that the center is more than 30 years old and required major work, such as an overhaul of electrical systems.

In an effort to further diversify the merchant base, Pau said the company is trying to attract a nationally recognized chain store to the empty space on the corner of Homestead and Wolfe. She said company representatives she has talked to say they are concerned that the Asian focus of the retail center will not draw a racially-mixed customer base.

Pau is quick to point out that the center offers products and services for all people. There are two banks, a dentist, an optometrist, a hairstylist and a Post Office Express located in a gift shop. A coffeehouse offers cappuccino drinks and lattes, as well as tea drinks suited to Asian tastes. And the 99 Ranch Market sells both American and Asian foods.

"We want to see this center become a success for the entire community," Pau said.

Statton said just the fact that the center has been renovated and looks nicer than it did two years ago has helped out the community. The sales-tax revenues, once the center is in full swing, will be welcomed, too.

"I feel really happy when I drive or run by and see people in the parking lot and walking through the center," Statton said. "That's got to feel good from anybody's point of view."

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