RIP Franchises of our youths

[Drunk Monk]

Shops At Tanforan sold, will become biotech office space
The mall has been around for more than 50 years.
[img=374x0]https://images.radio.com/aiu-media/GettyImages1225087021-5259588d-3609-4e56-a0fb-5330c1c18629.jpg?width=800[/img]

JC Penney at Tanforan Photo credit Justin Sullivan / Staff

  By Dallas Osborn, KCBS Radio


San Bruno's Shops at Tanforan has been a staple on the peninsula since opening as a shopping center in 1971. It's future has become clearer this week as Southern California-based Alexandria Real Estate has reportedly purchased the mall for $328.5 million and will transform it into a tech campus.

Tech companies, science companies, and tech firms are expected to make the upcoming office space home in the coming years.

Tanforan will continue operating as a shopping center for now, but will soon go the way of previously shuttered Bay Area malls like Cupertino's Vallco & Richmond's Hilltop Mall.

Tanforan was a bit out of my range except for my years at castle highland/st barbarian when I was traveling to and fro between svale & sf. I’d stop by occasionally. I grew up in vallco so I have some mallrat roots. I think the last time I was at tanforan was on the way to memorial for an Rm friend just before the pandemic. Hardly recognized the place, but such is the case with most malls now.

[Greg]

I started early at Eastridge. I don't think I was ever in Tanforan but I heard ads for it for years.

[Drunk Monk]

Marie Callender's in San Jose closes, only one restaurant remains in SF Bay Area

  NEWS  

There's soon going to be only one place in the San Francisco Bay Area to pick up a Marie Callender's tangy lemon meringue pie.
The San Jose location of the restaurant and bakery chain known for its pies is closing its doors on Monday, and only a Sunnyvale location will remain.
The franchise owner told the San Jose Mercury News that he could no longer afford the rent. The kitchen is already closed, but pies (from coconut cream to apple) will be for sale at the bakery through today. 
The late Marie Callender started baking pies at home in Long Beach, Calif., in the 1940s after "answering a delicatessen's help-wanted ad," the New York Times said in her 1995 obituary. The deli owner urged her to start a baking business and she went on to sell her pies to restaurants in Orange County. Marie's son, Don, opened the first restaurant in 1964 in Orange, and the family went on to open several more before selling to Ramada Inn in 1986, "when it had annual sales of $175 million," the Times said. Ramada sold the company to Wilshire Restaurant Group in 1989, the LA Times reported, and the chain struggled financially.
The restaurants still use many of Marie's original recipes, the company website said.
The company that now owns the Marie Callender's restaurant chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2019. At the time, 19 locations in the U.S. were shuttered.

[cranefly]

Wow, the last pie standing is in Sunnyvale.  That's one the we used to frequent, taking visiting friends and relatives there on occasion (when we weren't taking them spectacle-seeing at one of the Fry's Electronics).  We've still got a slew of MC pie tins, which probably can't be returned for credit anymore.

[Drunk Monk]

We used to hit the one on Stevens Creek, but then that closed eons ago. 

Every once in a while, my mom would talk me into going to the Svale one, but there was very little for me to eat there beyond the salad bar. We haven't been there since the pandemic and my mom's back surgery. It's like the restaurant that time forgot. Hmm, that would make a decent Twilight Zone episode.

[Greg]

the only time I've ever eaten there was when I was working on a film in the Santa Clarita valley and there was an MC nearby we went to for lunch a couple of times. I have eaten her Mac and Cheese many times from the grocery store.

[King Bob]

My mom and her church friends used to go to the Cupertino one. There was a certain thing on the menu they liked (aside from pie) but I can't remember what it was. We went to the Los Gatos one a few times for pie, but that must be over ten years ago. Christina makes pie occasionally.

[thatguy]

They built a new one next to the Capitola mall then shuttered it. The building was dormant for quite a while, but is now an Olive Garden. 

I think I went to that MC once for a pie and was not impressed. We have Gizditch Ranch in Watsonville. They make an apple pie that's about a foot tall. Their ollalieberry pie is awesome.

--tg

[King Bob]

Zanotto's by our house has those Gizditch pies. They are super tasty. They carry about three brands of pies, but those are the best.

[Drunk Monk]

I used to like MC's chicken pot pies back when I ate chicken. I'm not really a pie guy. My mom used to make an awesome lemon meringue pie which I loved but she hasn't made one of those since forever...maybe before my dad had his stroke. She doesn't cook at all now - it's all lean cuisines, ensure, and whatever I bring her, or occasional offerings from neighbors, my cousins, or the caretakers. One of her caretakers brought her some soup recently, which was above and beyond the call of duty. 

Black Bear supplanted MC.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Black Bear is superior to MC in all ways.

[Drunk Monk]

9 MARCH 2022/SF NEWS/JAY BARMANN


Ack! Mummified Body Found Inside Wall of Old Oakland Convention Center

Construction workers tearing down walls at the long defunct Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center in Oakland made a gruesome discovery Wednesday: a mummified corpse of indeterminate age or sex.
We're likely going to be hearing a lot about this story in the next few days, as surprise corpses that no one can identify tend to make for good headlines and TV news segments. 
The mummified remains could date back decades, or at least since walls were last moved around inside. As KPIX reports, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office has confirmed the presence of the human remains, and the county coroner was on the scene Thursday evening. 
Sgt. Ray Kelly, the spokesperson for the sheriff’s office, told the Chronicle that the body was likely in there "for many years," and that it had been partially "preserved" inside the wall. Going further with his explanation, Kelly said, "Under ideal conditions a body will harden and become like leather, similar to a mummy."
The construction workers who found the body are with Orton Development, Inc. Orton has plans to rehabilitate and reuse the old convention center as a performance venue, and will be leasing it back from the city — the City of Oakland entered into an exclusive agreement with Orton going back to 2015, and this project was supposed to get underway in 2020.
The building, which sits next to Lake Merritt, was built in 1914, but it closed as an event space back in 2005.
As Wikipedia notes, the building was used as a makeshift hospital during the 1918-19 influenza pandemic. The space was home to the Roller Derby throughout the 1950s and 60s, and on December 28, 1962, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke there to an audience of 7,000 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. It was also a regular venue for the Grateful Dead from the late 1960s to the 1980s.

Went to many a Dead show here (with some of you even) and worked this venue for years. I have many fond memories.

I am NOT surprised.

Slightly OT because it's not quite being torn down...

[thatguy]

It was that fruit company!

This was in the SF Chron, link goes to Apple News: 
https://apple.news/Aef63W8b5ROKrBKh-FCgK1w

LOCAL

Cupertino megaproject will include world’s largest green roof. Here’s what it will look like

After seven years of lawsuits, failed ballot measures and a global pandemic, the contentious effort to replace a dead mall a mile from Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino is preparing to begin construction.

What was once a 1970s mall called Vallco will now be branded as The Rise, a $4 billion behemoth of a project that will include 2,400 housing units and nearly 2 million square feet of office space and 429,000 square feet of new shops and restaurants. At 7 million square feet, the entire project will be more than twice as large as Apple Park.

The project will feature a 29-acre green roof that will be the world’s largest and accessible to the public, giving the project its new name, which was announced Friday. Leasing efforts will now begin to fill the commercial space, said Reed Moulds, managing director of project developer Sand Hill Property Company.

Local residents opposed the project’s scale and said it would exacerbate traffic. The city of Cupertino fought the project as well, but the project won approval in 2018 thanks to SB 35, a housing law that streamlined approvals if a project includes 50% affordable housing. Sand Hill prevailed in a lawsuit filed by opponents in 2020, clearing the way for the project.

Sand Hill is securing building permits and hopes to start excavation in the next few months. The first phase will include around 800 housing units, most of the retail and open space, taking around three years to complete. The second two phases will include the office space on the western and east sides of the site. Rafael Vinoly is the project’s architect and Olin is the landscape architect.

Half of Vallco’s homes will be reserved for low and very low income residents, or those making 80% or less of the area median income.

“There’s been a lot of discussion around the housing crisis and how the Vallco project can help,” Moulds said. “We want to be part of the best-possible solution.”

Sand Hill’s equity partner is the deep-pocketed Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. The project has full financing and the owners plan to be long-term operators, Moulds said.

In response to the pandemic, the housing, which will include rentals and units for sale, will have more auxiliary rooms for home offices and other uses, Moulds said.

After community feedback, Sand Hill increased the number of one-bedroom affordable apartments to 537. There will also be 103 two-bedroom and three-bedroom affordable units, which will help provide housing to families, many of whom struggle to find accommodations in the pricey Silicon Valley suburb.

The project is seeking a range of retailers, along with restaurants and entertainment venues including theaters and potentially a bowling alley and ice skating rink, Moulds said.

“It will feel like a collection of districts,” he said, with elements for work, play and convenience. “This is the 5-minute city version of the 15-minute city,” an urbanism concept that calls for easy access to essential services.
Although major Bay Area companies are cutting back on days in the office, Moulds said the project would be vibrant and have the open space and other amenities to draw people and potential tenants in. Remote work also hasn’t extinguished tech’s growth: Apple signed a huge 700,000-square-foot office lease in nearby Sunnyvale last year, and Facebook’s parent Meta also signed major deals in the Valley.

“The market shows us there’s still a very strong appetite for incredible work environments,” Moulds said. “Certainly in this region, anything at scale is going to be unique.”

--tg

[Drunk Monk]

Alas Vallco...

I grew up in that there mall...

[Greg]

Why do I get the feeling that the low and very low housing units will never come to fruition?