But now, a small group of young, enthusiastic professionals is planning to bring a brewery back to downtown Sunnyvale, and change the way people get their gourmet food. They're also updating the building layout, bringing equipment up to code, making the facility wheelchair accessible and promoting positive feng shui energy flow.

Operations manager Allison Yamashita says she hopes to open the Firehouse Grill & Brewery before the end of October, around the same time demolition is slated for completion on the Town Center Mall.

A number of Sunnyvale residents and leaders are looking to the new mall project to revitalize the area, but many are concerned that the traffic, dust and noise of the construction will drive patrons away.

"The day we open, we're going to help revitalize the downtown area, and I think all the other businesses downtown will benefit from the business we're going to bring in," Ehab Youssef, one of Firehouse's four owners, says.

Youssef, an attorney who lives in Los Gatos, and his fellow owners all met while studying law at Santa Clara University. They also own a Togos and Baskin Robbins store.

Firehouse gives the group an opportunity to move to another level. Youssef said the entire project is a $1 million investment, and much of that is going into redesigning the building to meet guidelines set by the Americans with Disabilities Act. That includes installing a wheelchair lift to bring people to the second floor.

"We've always wanted to put our ideology of gourmet food for the masses into play," Youssef says. "We're trying to make a family-friendly atmosphere while at the same time running a microbrewery, so there will be something that everyone in the community can enjoy."

Yamashita, 33, says the goal is to give people the price, quality and quick dining experience they want.

"I really want a family of four to be able to come in here and eat for $30 and feel that they got a good meal," she says. "We also want people to be able to come in and get out in 45 minutes for lunch."

To accomplish this, the food will be ordered at a main cashier and picked up by the diners. There will be no serving staff, which will save both the restaurant and diners money.

The investors met Yamashita while she was managing the British Bankers Club restaurant in Menlo Park. Yamashita says she was attracted to the atmosphere on S. Murphy Avenue.

Planning for the project began in January. The owners chose the name Firehouse to honor Sunnyvale's public safety officers. The logo--designed by a childhood friend of brewmaster Matt Gasparini--is of the mythological phoenix in flames flying in front of a firefighter's shield, holding a pint of beer.

"I absolutely adore the small-town feel," Yamashita says. "The city of Sunnyvale is so welcoming, I can't imagine trying this in San Jose or another big city."

Once Yamashita was on board, it was a matter of finding the right people to run the brewery and kitchen.

Gasparini, 24, came by way of the University of California, Davis' brewing program. Yamashita sent a notice to all students working on their master's degree in brewing, and interviewed a number of people who responded.

Gasparini brought a number of samples to the interview, tastes he had perfected brewing in his home.

"[Yamashita] says the reason I was hired was because I brought beer to my interview," he says.

Gasparini recently lived and worked in Chico, home to the Sierra Nevada Brewery, one of the most successful microbrews in the nation. Like Sierra Nevada, he says he wants to have a core of popular brews and offer special flavors and styles for holidays and other occasions.

To start, he will offer firehouse lager, pale ale, porter and wheat beers. The first seasonal beer will most likely be a gingerbread beer for winter.

There will also be a "Mason's maibock," in honor of Gasparini's newborn son Mason. Yamashita says that brew will be--appropriately--served in mason jars.

He is also brewing root beer.

"I can't wait to get brewing," Gasparini says. "I've kind of been assisting things up until now, so I can't wait to get started, that's my baby."

The brewery is capable of brewing 20 barrels at a time, equal to about 40 kegs of beer or 124 pints per barrel.

"We're hoping to move 1,000 barrels in our first year," Gasparini says.

The owners filled the kitchen position using the popular Internet site craigslist. More than 400 chefs applied. The winner was San Jose resident Dave Ryman, 33.

Ryman says he thinks he was picked because his cooking style matched the type of food Yamashita and the owners were hoping to serve.

"It's very straightforward 'comfort'-type food, with a lot of Southern influence," he says.

Ryman says he's been cooking for 17 years. He lived and worked in both New Orleans and Seattle, and his cooking reflects that. From the south, he brought spicy foods, sweet potatoes and pork dishes. The Pacific Northwest taught him about seafood including king crab and salmon.

While he's still testing the menu, it may eventually include such items as chilled shellfish gazpacho--a soup--and buttermilk fried chicken fingers with homemade biscuits.

It will also feature "fallin' off the bone tender" Cuban-style pork roast and--of course--rotisserie cooked chicken. According to Ryman, the rotisserie can hold almost 60 birds at a time.

He says he also has experience with start-up restaurants, and enjoys the challenge of starting from the ground.

"It's a little different than coming into an established place, because there you have to take over for another chef and take all their methods and morph it into your own," Ryman says. "This is a little new to me, but the main running of the kitchen is very similar to any other project I've been a part of."

The challenge applies to more than just the food and the beer. The entire store is being redone, from the paint on the walls, to the toilets, to the staircase in the front of the store.

The staircase to the second floor currently sits directly inside the front doors, so visitors' first view is of a staircase. To remedy this, Yamashita says the staircase will be rotated to the right, out of the line-of-sight from the door. She says she has heard it's a better orientation according to the rules of feng shui, the Chinese art of space organization. According to "Feng Shui for Dummies," articles on Dummies.com, the stairs in front of the door would cause positive energy to flow too quickly upstairs, missing the entire downstairs area.

Ryman says the wood-fired grill from Stoddard's is still a part of the kitchen, but the rest is being redone to make sure all facilities are updated and up-to-code. The kitchen will have 15 to 20 people working in it, which is more than most restaurants, but is possible because there won't be a serving staff.

"I'm just excited to open, we've been working really hard on this; everyone's been pouring themselves into it," Ryman says. "We're all excited to get it going and bring something back to the area."