As someone who does a lot of walking through our urban areas, it pleases me to see commercial areas that are attractive, interesting places. Busy storefronts attract people, who then attract other businesses, ultimately raising the tenor of the area. An empty storefront, on the other hand, can sometimes act as the first domino to fall in a sequence that can bring an area down.
One or two small spaces being empty along a block or in a shopping center often have little effect — and can often be filled with relatively little trouble. Larger spaces, however, are a different story. A large empty space stands out like a missing tooth. Because larger retailers are often the primary draw to a shopping area, when they go, smaller retailers often go shortly thereafter.
When a large retailer like Sears closes, it can be hard to know what to do with the large, now-vacant space. Hillsdale Shopping Center, in San Mateo, was somewhat lucky in that their Sears store was largely separate from the rest of the mall, being located along with the mall’s food court on the other side of 31st Avenue. That isolation enabled Hillsdale’s owner to — with relative ease — tear down the Sears store and build in its place an attractive, all-new section of the mall containing not only an updated food court but also some popular high-end retailers (including an Apple store) and entertainment venues.
Closer to home, the 2018 shutdown of Orchard Supply Hardware left both Redwood City and San Carlos with large, empty retail spaces. Redwood City got lucky when a smaller hardware chain eventually bought the rights to some of Orchard Supply Hardware’s branding and assumed some of their old leases. San Carlos’ store, on the other hand, while no longer empty, is no longer a retailer, but is instead occupied by the Silicon Valley offices of Enel X, a maker of electric vehicle charging equipment.
Because San Carlos’ Orchard Supply Hardware store was somewhat out of the way (on Industrial Road, a couple blocks north of Holly Street) and largely stand-alone, it wasn’t the kind of place people regularly walked by. Thus its transformation from retailer to office space hasn’t affected its surroundings the way the loss of another retailer might. For example, consider Redwood City’s Veterans Square shopping center (at the corner of Veterans Boulevard and Maple Street). One of the large spaces in that center used to be home to Kohlweiss Auto Parts. When Frank Kohlweiss, the proprietor, decided to retire after some 38 years in the business, his storefront, after sitting empty for a couple of months, was leased by Dexterity Inc., a maker of warehouse robots. I’ve walked by the space several times since Dexterity moved in, and that Dexterity’s blacked-out windows do make the center — which is also home to Hoot Judkins Furniture, Party City, Tuesday Morning and one or two other retailers — less attractive from a retailing standpoint. Perhaps not coincidentally, a couple of retail spaces in that center now stand empty, with Antiques Then & Now having closed and Soccer Pro having relocated to San Carlos.
Whenever I see a large, empty retail space given all-new life in such a way that keeps it attractive to its neighboring retailers, I pay attention. I know of a couple of former grocery store spaces that have been turned into 24-Hour Fitness gyms, for instance. The fact that you can see into the spaces and watch people working out catches your eye, and makes them far more interesting to someone walking by than, say, a tech company office. And because at least some of the people working out in those gyms may decide to get their clothes cleaned or have their hair done at one of the service businesses conveniently located in the same center, the gym ends up serving as a nice draw for the center’s other businesses.
One of the neatest reuses of an old Orchard Supply Hardware is one I just recently encountered; in Arizona, an empty OSH space has been turned into a large brewpub. The on-site brewing operation takes up at least half of the old interior space, while the remaining interior space and the large outdoor area (which was formerly the garden center) serves as the dining space. Cleverly, the place is called “OHSO.” They say it stands for “Outrageous Homebrewer’s Social Outpost,” but surely the proprietors simply scrambled the initials of Orchard Supply Hardware and then made up a phrase to fit those letters. However the name came about, the food and the beer are great, and the atmosphere is terrific. And, of course, it contributes mightily to the attractiveness of the shopping center in which it is located. Now if only something similar could be done with Redwood City’s long-empty Kmart space.
Greg Wilson is the creator of Walking Redwood City, a blog inspired by his walks throughout Redwood City and adjacent communities. He can be reached at greg@walkingRedwoodCity.com. Follow Greg on Twitter @walkingRWC.
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