Saratoga News

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Pau purchases Quito Village Shopping Center

By Shannon Burkey

San Mateo developer Peter Pau has purchased a piece of prime Saratoga real estate, the Quito Village Shopping Center, for $26 million.

The sale, which closed on July 17, will give Pau, who currently owns the 10-acre office site next-door to the property, a 16-acre piece of property on a bustling corner of Saratoga at Cox and Saratoga avenues.

"This is a very important shopping center for Saratoga, and Peter loves the location--the location is phenomenal," said David Taxin, the principal broker with Meacham/Oppenheimer Inc., who handled the sale.

The property was not officially on the market, but Taxin said he knew owners Bob Longinetti, Kelly Heil and Pete Dana were interested in selling and he thought he might know someone interested. Taxin represented both the buyer and sellers on the deal.

Since Pau, the founder of Sand Hill Property Company, has owned the property next-door to the shopping center for the past two years, Taxin said he went to him first. The two are longtime business associates, and Taxin has represented Pau in previous deals.

"We were basically next-door neighbors and it just came about that way," Pau said. "I wasn't necessarily looking. They said they might be interested in selling and I said I might be interested in buying."

Pau owns property throughout the South Bay, including the former site of Swanson Ford in Los Gatos, which he bought last summer for $19 million. He said he plans to turn that property into a mixed commercial and residential development.

He is also working on a joint project with the real estate investment firm RREEF to redevelop the Sunnyvale Town Center into a 1,265,000-square-foot mix of retail and office space with restaurants, a movie theater and townhouses. He also owns properties in Sunnyvale and Cupertino, which he plans to redevelop into retail, office and housing space as well.

"He's getting entrenched in the west side here, but he hadn't landed in Saratoga yet," Taxin said.

With ownership of both the office space and the shopping center, Pau will now be in a better position to reposition or remodel the property in a more useful way, Taxin said.

The 80,000-square-foot center, which is 30 years old, houses Gene's Fine Foods, 24 Hour Fitness, an art academy and several restaurants and shops.

Pau said he is an active owner who would like to figure out a way to make the older Quito Shopping Center better.

"It definitely needs to be improved on. As a whole, it's not very well organized," Pau said.

Pau said the layout of the center is unconventional, with some shops facing the back of the property and the parking lot not laid out in the most efficient way.

"Those are the types of things we'd like to work on," he said. "We want to find ways to make improvements, but we probably won't be doing a major redevelopment."

Since several of the tenants have long-term leases, any plan for the site would most likely be a long-term plan, Taxin said.

"We don't have any definite plans yet, but we'll work on it piece by piece over time," said Pau.