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Shopping center is poised for a makeover
New facade will give WG plaza an upscale atmosphere
By Kara Chalmers
The Willow Glen Shopping Center, at the corner of Curtner Avenue and Almaden Road, will soon be getting a major face-lift, if plans for its revitalization are approved.
Property owner Joe Kovalik is happy with the artist's rendering and thinks the new plaza will be stunning.
"Our goal is to upgrade the shopping center so the whole neighborhood feels comfortable going there," he says. "We're turning it into a destination, as opposed to something you go to on your way to somewhere else."
The shopping center would be renamed the "Willow Glen Plaza." But the transformation won't just be in name. The plans, which are awaiting review by the city planning department, call for an all-new facade, as well as new landscaping, light poles and signs.
"I don't think there's any question [about approval]," says Marty Woodworth, assistant director of San Jose's Office of Economic Development. His office helped Kovalik get the revitalization plans started. Woodworth hopes that plans will be finalized within weeks so construction can begin around the first of the year.
The plan is for the new plaza to look like a small town with different colors and elevations for signs and stores.
"[The shopping center] is one of the only shopping centers in the area," says Kovalik. "We want to make it the best available shopping center anywhere, not just in the area."
Kovalik says a guard will patrol the new center on foot. Also, he says, his tenants will be "upgraded."
Since the renovations will cost so much, tenants will have to be able to pay more rent, either by selling higher-quality products or by attracting a larger number of patrons, according to Kovalik.
He says he would like the plaza to have an upscale, family atmosphere, and he wants new establishments, such as a Starbucks and a bagel place.
Some existing leases will be terminated, and some of the present tenants may be relocated in the new space, according to Kovalik.
Although he has not decided anything yet, he plans to give any relocating tenants as much time as possible to move.
"We are not a large corporation," he says of his business. "We are a family in real estate that tries to develop relations with tenants."
Safeway, one of the large tenants, has four years left on its lease. Marty Woodworth says he hopes that once the revitalization is done, Safeway will expand its lease and do over its interior.
Kovalik says he is excited about a nationally recognized video store that may move into the vacant bank building in the center, a deal he hopes to close this month. He would not disclose the prospective tenant's identity.
The Office of Economic Development ran a survey of 110 shopping centers in San Jose and Kovalik's site was picked as deserving of aid, in terms of time and energy.
"We targeted this one as having potential for revitalization," says Woodworth.
The office also offered a monetary loan, which Kovalik says he will not need.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
