The Sunnyvale Sun

News

Design for new city core adds hotel, more retail space

By Stephen Baxter

An ambitious new development team in Sunnyvale says it has stripped previous plans to create a thinly veiled shopping mall in the city's core in favor of a more traditional downtown.

In public meetings last week, Sand Hill Property Co., architects and city planners presented designs for a new downtown, which would add a hotel, more restaurant space and a supermarket to earlier plans.

The planning commission decided Jan. 29 to approve the plan with conditions of A, B and C (TK Monday night-please budget a line here). The city council is expected to vote on the land sale to Sand Hill at 7 p.m., Feb. 6 at 456 W. Olive Ave.

Bounded by S. Mathilda, W. Washington, S. Sunnyvale and W. Iowa avenues, the 34-acre square has had a Target, Macy's, a garage and a large, unused parking lot for years. The previous developer walked away from the project in 2005, and Sand Hill has revised the plans.

The new developers want to build several new streets with slightly fewer stores, more restaurants, and the same amount of office space and housing. It would likely finish construction in 2009.

Many previous features have been eliminated, such as outdoor walkways on a second level of shops, and seven of the nine bridges that would have connected buildings are also omitted.

"It would have been like a mall with a roof off, which was a negative aspect," said Robert Paternoster, Sunnyvale's community development director, at a Jan. 24 meeting.

The new design centers on Redwood Square, a public meeting place connected by tree-shaded streets for strolling. Four parking garages would occupy corners of the project, though some would be for tenants of offices and condominiums.

A boutique hotel across from a 14-screen movie theater is also in the plans, and total space for shops has been knocked back more than 16,000 square feet to 991,761. Twenty thousand square feet of restaurant space also has been added to the design.

The city has been collecting written questions from residents at several public meetings, and it is encouraging neighbors to attend the city council meeting that will weigh the project on Feb. 6.