The Sun Sunnyvale's Newspaper Mall owners plan to link downtown to Town Center By Michelle Ku American Mall Properties pledged to revitalize the Sunnyvale Town Center after purchasing the struggling mall in July. Last week, the company took a step in that direction when it presented its conceptual plans to make the mall inviting by creating synergy with the rest of the downtown area. The plans will change the face of downtown by making the mall visible from Mathilda Avenue and connecting the center to Murphy Avenue with additional retail space. In presentations to the City Council, planning commission and downtown resource team, AMP received the first round of public comment on the proposed enhancements. "The conceptual phase is so critical. We want to have a good consensus building not only with the city, but with the community at large," said David Kato, a representative for AMP. "We don't want to get off on a bad foot." American Mall Properties sees five problems with the existing Town Center: lack of visibility from Mathilda Avenue, lack of major upscale tenants, merchandise at stores not marketing to the area's demographics and minimal foot traffic after 6 p.m. and on weekends. The fact that the mall turns inward from the rest of downtown is also a problem, according to AMP. To attract more shoppers, AMP is planning to replace the existing six-screen AMC movie theater inside the mall with an 18- to 20-screen theater. "We know that there is demand for a 20-screen complex so that's what we're looking at. The community, in terms of patronage of the theater, will be able to support a complex of that size," Kato said. AMP wants to remove the center portion of the two-story parking structure and turn it into an indoor/outdoor shopping area with a promenade of retail buildings extending from the mall entrance to Mathilda. The property owners also want to attract higher-end restaurants to what designers labeled on their renderings as Silicon Valley Center. Opening up the center of the parking structure would provide the mall with the visibility AMP believes it needs from Mathilda Avenue. "A fundamental and critical dysfunction of the mall is the parking structure. It obstructs any view or sense of invitation to the mall from Mathilda, which is the primary thoroughfare," Kato said. To offset the lost parking spaces, designers envision a parking structure on the corner of Washington and Sunnyvale avenues, away from the residential areas by Iowa Avenue. The parking structure would accommodate approximately 1,800 vehicles, said Trudi Ryan, planning officer for Sunnyvale. The conceptual plans also call for overhead access from the parking structure to Macy's and J.C. Penney's. The plans also develop continuity with the surrounding downtown area by adding retail space in front of Macy's to connect the center with Murphy Avenue. "We want to create synergy not only for the mall, but for the downtown as a whole. We are looking to have additional retail on Washington to tie in the existing and growing retail on Murphy Avenue to increase traffic between the two areas," Kato said. With the presentation of the conceptual plans, the city has enough information to begin some of the environmental analysis needed for the project, Ryan said. "With the environmental reports, we can work on the designs in more detail," she said. The environmental reports and designs should be ready for a public hearing early in the next calendar year, Ryan said. Since the plans are still conceptual, AMP has not submitted any architectural designs to the city. "This could still go in many directions in the months to come. This is really just the first production in terms of presenting a concept," Kato said. The city will be keeping the public informed of the progress through the city's Web site. "It's everybody's downtown. It's not just for the people who are immediately adjacent to it," Ryan said. For more information about the plans for the Sunnyvale Town Center, contact Dyane Matas at 730-7610 or Trudi Ryan at 730-7444. [ Back to Contents Page | Sunnyvale Sun Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, October 21, 1998. ©1998 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.