Tech-heads, brace yourselves: Fry's Electronics is set to close in Palo Alto
By Ryan Fernandez – Associate editor, Silicon Valley Business Journal
Aug 29, 2019, 7:16am PDT
Prepare to say goodbye to another Silicon Valley retail stalwart — or part of it, anyway.
Palo Alto Online reports that the lease for the city’s Western-themed Fry’s Electronics megastore, located at 340 Portage Ave. in the Ventura neighborhood, is set to expire on Jan. 31. Fry’s spokesman Manuel Valerio said the store will close down sometime during that month, and must vacate the premises completely by that last day of January.
In an email to the publication, Valerio wrote: "Fry's is very sorry to be closing the Store. The people of the Palo Alto community, and surrounding environs, have been great customers and friends of Fry's, and supportive of our business ever since we opened the store in 1990."
Fry’s Electronics stores have been fixtures in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area since John, Randy and David Fry, together with Kathryn Kolder, opened the first one in Sunnyvale in 1985. The impending closure of the Palo Alto store will leave five locations open in the Bay Area — in Campbell, Concord, Fremont, San Jose and Sunnyvale — out of 34 around the U.S.
Palo Alto Online writes that city officials were aware of the Fry’s lease expiring soon, and were making plans for the site and its surroundings, but nothing concrete has surfaced yet.
Though the parcel on which the store sits is zoned for housing, Fry’s was granted a commercial-use extension in 1994 that expires in 2019. Palo Alto’s Housing Element allows for the construction of a potential 221 housing units.
Currently owned by The Sobrato Organization, the building itself is more than a century old, having started life in 1918 as a cannery built by Thomas Foon Chew, owner of the Bayside Canning Company in Alviso. The cannery eventually became Palo Alto’s largest employer until it closed in 1949, employing about 1,000 workers at its height, according to a Historic Resource Evaluation by consulting firm Page & Turnbull. That same report found the site to be historically significant, calling it “a rare surviving example of Palo Alto's and Santa Clara County's agricultural past" — a finding that could complicate future development plans.
According to Palo Alto Online, Planning Director Jonathan Lait said at an Aug. 19 council meeting that Sobrato had no plans to redevelop the site: "They communicated to staff that at present ... they are not seeking to redevelop or demolish in whole or in part the existing Fry's building."
Silicon Valley Business Journal
https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2019/08/29/tech-heads-brace-yourselves-frys-electronics-is.html