Best wishes. Hope they don't give up when they find out there is no available parking.

Wouldn't it be funny, but a totally typical palo alto event, if the new grocer got held up by the burdensome palo alto permitting process.

@Shame on them,

This is probably just a generic excuse: blame the government for your failings.

If the city were smart, they would make an effort to move forward with this expeditiously so that it doesn't become a part of the record for the court case.

Excellent! I am so excited. Sounds like a perfect fit. Fresh Market sort of missed the mark in the area by having to many isles of bulk candy, all salads had loads of cheese on them, and even when it was a new market I found yucky expired soup on the shelves. I personally will do what I can to support this new market and I wish them the best. I will do my best to walk instead of drive when possible, but I do hope that shopping center starts to tow cars that are there to carpool, that would help a lot.

at this point i don't care who comes, anyone will do. this is long overdue great news!

to the owners of Crystal Springs Produce- thank you we will support you!!

also, in case you don't know you will need to get rid of all the carpoolers using your parking lot

Thrilled to hear this news. But yes, now I hope the landlord improves the parking situation at this shopping center!

parking problem is hopefully easy to solve.. Post 60 minute max parking signs and give tickets. Parking was not a problem when Fresh Market was there. The carpoolers saw a void and filled it (can't blame them) but this needs to stop.

Great news. Welcome! We will support you.

I look forward to walking over to the store!
If I buy a lot at the grocery, I will have to drive.
Now the time has come for those taking advantage of the parking lot as a "park n ride," etc. to quit their opportunistic practice, which started with the vacamcy of a grocer at the center.
The parking lot should resume being for those patronizing the Edgewood Center.
No overflow from the gas station, commuters, those who reside in the houses adjacent, whuch were built by the re-
Developer of Edgewood Center at great profit.

Good news about the grocers, but it will be interesting to see where the carpool parkers go since there is no carpool lot near 101.

I suspect that this area will now demand parking permit.

What a mess about parking for those who can't afford a permit and work in town!

So this will be like Milk Pail but cleaner? Yes! Milk Pail must be losing business because their parking lot is oftentimes full so I can't shop there. I don't know if this place can match Milk Pail prices, but still probably better than Piazza prices. If it's mainly a produce store, the turnover in shoppers will probably be fairly quick.

Miss the great meat from Fresh Market, but this will be nice. Safeway meats have actually improved so I don't always have to drive to Piazza's.

Guess those increased fines worked. Thanks to those tenacious residents who pushed on this.

BTW, Crystal Springs Produce has a 5 star rating on Yelp with 154 reviews, and only a single "$". That's a very good sign.

Web Link

Please, City Council, make this a two-hour parking lot. Then patrol it and give tickets to parkers overstaying the limit. That's the only way our wonderful new grocer will survive.

John- I think the owner was looking for a store all along. tough to find a tenant for ant undersized store in palo alto. now will come the real treat - will the neighbors who complained so much actually support the store. The yelp reviews are mentioned in the story
Mama- this store is private property. I am not sure the city police can enforce parking violations.

Did Palo Alto Online research this article or simply reprint the developers press release? E5Y

@shame on them

yes it's private property but i would hope that as such you have the right to enforce who parks on your property!! If that is not the case we are in big trouble as a country.

Post a sign with a max parking time, and warn violators will be towed, if it's violated don't call Palo Alto Police- call the towing company

@Kathy - What research are you looking for?

The carpoolers will likely start parking on neighborhood streets. If they are Stanford or downtown employees, it's still beneficial to carpool because they only have to find one parking spot at their destination. More parking signs will be needed in that area, or perhaps, all over town. They could park basically anywhere, except in the neighborhoods that have permit requirements.

We've all seen "Customer Parking Only" signs. When your car is missing they suggest phoning PAPD at 329-2413 or Ellison's. Private property is enforced by PAPD as drivers find out quickly when parked without a handicap placard in a code-mandated blue spot, but it may be only when complaint-driven. If some stranger has parked in your home's private driveway, I think you're supposed to call the police rather than the towing company directly.

There is very little street or off-street parking available on the other side of 101.

I should clarify that last sentence of mine -- there are several hundred parking spots on the other side of 101, but they are generally all occupied. During business hours Embarcadero Road is parked solid almost to the far end. The Mings property has been leased to a car dealership, and likewise much of Palo Alto city-owned capacity by the airport.

There is a big parking lot at the Palo Alto golf course on Embarcadero Road (a couple of blocks east of Hwy 101) that never seems to be busy. Just saying.

We'll see how busy the golf course parking becomes when they reopen this fall. The current google maps aerial view (a random snapshot, pre-noon judging from the shadows) shows the lot about 25% occupied, just over 50 cars in the 205 spaces. The way those cars are parked, I'd venture half are on the driving range or in Bay Cafe, and the other half are airport related.

Granted it's sporadic, but I've seen many events in the Bay Cafe ballroom with over 100 attending. And they can accommodate another 100 inside and on the patio. It would make no sense to sacrifice flexibility at our few civic amenities on the altar of downtown or Stanford commuters.

wake up [email protected] - parking wasn't a problem back then because the ENTIRE plaza wasn't fully occupied by businesses yet...not just due to the market not being there. the idea of the plaza was to have a market in closer proximity to the residents in THAT area. fair to say that was a bust. let's see how things go.

let's fast forward. market fully running, carpoolers ousted. how about...let's have starbucks police their plaza patrons to not "camp" out for hours on end because of free wi-fi? and with the parking lot being so small, 7-8 cars of "CEOs" of their own software startup LLC DO take up a lot of space.

Or...that doesn't stop the couple who drives to the bagel shop, park their subaru, take their dog out, makes sure pup has water by interrupting another clients order, place their own bagel orders more complicated than picky starbucks patrons...and park their butts down for hours on end. all this while posting "tsk tsk tsk" comments about how it's a shame this plaza can't police itself and so forth while having no qualms about what they do because of their inflated sense of "entitlement". yes palo alto residents...you have done this to YOURSELVES. have fun sorting out this mess. *tsk tsk tsk*

Amazing how rapidly SandHill found a replacement grocery when the fines were increased. Really amazing.

They were drawing in a nice line of rental income from Fresh by simply keeping the store empty and doing nothing ... until the increased fines tipped the scales. And what do you know, they found a new grocer just-like-that. Quelle Surprise.

Kudos to the residents who kept fighting for the last 3 years and to the City who eventually lost patience and slapped on effective fines.

St. Francis-- i think sand hill has been looking for a grocer for years. You think an undersized store in palo alto is easy to rent out? Palo alto thinks that stores will flock to open here so they can be in palo alto? Hardly. Lets see how much support this store gets. Plus wait until the new owner gets entangled in the palo alto permit process.

@Shame on them - previous Fresh store was (a) profitable and (b) did not get entangled in any sort of Permit process.

There is no reason why this new store should have a different experience.

On previous articles on this matter, there have been a surprising number of commenters jumping to the defense of Sand Hill. Not quite sure why. Now I am as pro-business as anyone. But Sand Hill made millions out of developing that space and selling apartments, and then reneged on their half of the deal, instead pursuing a form of corporate squatting whereby Fresh were still paying them rent but the property was lying empty. The big losers here were the local residents. And the only party in all of this who broke their commitments were Sand Hill. Every other side kept up their end of the deal. That's not opinion, that's the findings of the court.

@Shame on them - it was Sandhill who claimed it would be no problem to fill the grocery store if the city would just let them convert the parking lot behind it into 10 condos. That is until they sold the 10 condos for $30 million. Then all of a sudden it became impossible to find a replacement grocer, until the fines got too steep, then they found one immediately. You'll notice that Sandhill was actually willing to help this grocer out because of the fines instead of charging an increase for Andronica.

I will be shopping at the new grocer, just like I did the old one, which was meeting its financial plan and closed because they shut down the entire west coast, despite the Palo Alto store being successful.

Yea!!!

This is great news, can't wait. The 5 Yelp rating sounds good too. Let's all do our part and hope for the best.

Great news! There should be designated parking for the grocer. I will definitely support it by shopping there.

This is great news, we will definitely be shopping there on a regular basis! The shopping center will have to post some kind of signs and monitor the lot. I predict there will be a call for 2 hour permit parking on the neighboring streets sometime down the road. Pretty much any neighborhood walking distance to the shuttle is fair game for commuters...

I might try shopping there once just to see what they have to offer. I tend to be, however, a one stop grocery shopper and that's because I, like most Americans, drive to do their grocery shopping. I don't like having to go to a produce store, then a bakery, then a cheese shop, and then a butcher shop, fish market, or deli. That works well in Europe and I experienced that when we visited our son when he was in the Army and stationed in Germany. I loved that experience. Those shops were located right next to each other in villages, and people walked to them. And there was also a florist in the village next to those other shops. Those shops specialized in their product, and so it was of the highest quality. Big cities in this country also have their neighborhood shops, pretty much like Europe, but Palo Alto doesn't fit that pattern.

Didn't mean to sound so negative, and I hope they survive and thrive in that location.

Looking forward to walking over there at least every two days to pick up as much as I can carry!

I have a question: is this to be a full-service grocer or is it focused or limited to produce, cheese, and similar items?

We did 75% of our shopping at Lucky/Albertsons and 45% at Fresh Market so we intend to be serious users, but if the coverage is limited, I am afraid it won't get much of my business.

Thanks if you know the answer.

Certainly hope this all works out - and hope the new grocers have a good lawyer - dealing with SH is not and will not be easy.

on the food issue - there was no mention made of takeout - lunch and dinner traffic was quite good at FM and think many people would welcome that service.

Sounds like this grocery will be a larger version of the very popular Milk Pail grocery in Mountain View. 20,000 square feet should be plenty of space if they are focusing on fresh produce, not frozen or packaged goods like Safeway or Trader Joes. Milk Pail is smaller than that, isn't it?

No comment from anyone who has been to their Crystal Springs location. Been there; The Milk Pail it's not, and it's across from a Safeway. Far from the full service store Edgewood needs. They do not carry meat.

This is great news. Best wishes to CSP!

As for the pervious tenant Fresh Market, I'm going to miss that entire aisle dedicated to candy...Said no one. :-P
Fresh Market was poorly managed from the start.

I will possibly use this store when I am exiting 101 and need to stop for milk, bread or something for dinner. I hope it does well and that the locals find it meets their needs.

Thanks Ha-Ha.

I don't think anything less than a full-service tore will have a chance there.

If I have to do the Safeway anyway, I will probably just do all of my shopping there.

If things do not work out so rosy, and I am really rooting for this new place,
but if they do not ... is Sand Hill still on the hook to maintain a market in this
location, and if so, for how long? This is a good arrangement, the one thing
the City did right.

Hope for the best, but planning for the worst ... I support the fines for Sand
Hill. They should not have taken the deal for the short term money and signed
a long term commitment if they did not think it through, but what happens
if Palo Alto is stuck with a very long term empty store despite SH's fines and
best efforts. How long before a real and sensible rethinking of this location
can be and is done?

Looking back on this F-fiasco and the real lack of benefit it brings to the community,
how can the people of Palo Alto do better, to get the City Council to behave
competently, or to define and put in place some better or democratic means
to collect input on locations and allow appropriate development?

If I were King of Palo Alto I would have decided that this location cannot be home
to a large scale market unless the entire space is committed to it with sufficient
parking. I think of the design of Santana Row or the Safeway location in Mtn. View
for a model, or the Los Altos ( is it? ) Whole Foods with its ample underground parking.
Parking underneath, and perhaps on top, a large central market and perhaps condos
at the outside of the top for single. small working or retired families that do not intend
to live there forever but desires the convenience of walk-to service stores like
Starbucks, bagels, etc.

If something cannot be found to work and this current design is inappropriate,
I think the city is stuck because of the houses in this lot ... and that was an
intolerably bad decision it seems to me.

How does it compare to Sprouts?

Wow, this store looks great. Any parking problems can be resolved by limiting time to 1 hour in the store area and no more than 3 hours anywhere in the lot. They can setup a machine that issues paper receipts for numbered spots with date and time but just not charge for the parking. Then any car without a receipt on dash or with expired receipt can be towed. City parking tickets on private property are not enforceable but towing is. Dated parking receipts with towing will eliminate daytime carpoolers.

Do you know that Palo Alto tickets parking violations on Stanford property? Yup, private, but Palo Alto just can't get enough of that parking violation money. They seem to be banking on parking fines and fees to finance the city, so why can't they ticket at Edgewood?

@ha ha - The Edgewood location is at least 8 times as big as the San Mateo location (triple the Milk Pail size), so they will have plenty of room for additional products.

I hope that Sand Hill will put up signs-- and plenty of them-- that requisition several spaces for "grocery store
parking ONLY"; and a BIG sign that says " no park and ride parking, violators will be towed".

It would be great if Sand Hill would either provide more parking area or at least a security guard to enforce the parking ( and call the tow truck on violators)!

@Jim: Parking spot machine? No, that is way too much trouble for customers and will hurt their business.

@ChrisC: PAPD does cover Stanford property too. Why do you have a problem with them issuing parking tickets? Shouldn't people follow the law? Is anarchy better?

1.5 hour max would be appropriate. There is a restaurant in the mall, and 1.5 would also stop Starbuck's grazers from using it as an office.

A small selection of good quality meat would be nice. Not necessary to spend the money on a butcher, but would be nice to be able to pick up full dinner ingredients as I did at Fresh Market.

[Post removed.]

This store is great news - and Target will be opening a store at the old site of Sports Authority.

WOW! Big step up for the new owners from the current location in San Mateo. Looking at pictures of their SM location Web Link

looks pretty small. Will need to add tons of products in fill the new spot. Are the new owners willing to expand their model?

Guessing the fines from the city didn't stipulate a "full service market".

Good luck to all.

All day street parking is legal unless otherwise marked. All day working on private property without patronizing businesses isn't medal. Palo Altans - your streets can be used for carpoolers, just as the public streets in surrounding cities are used by carpoolers. With an incoming grocery store it makes sense to handle the parking lot issues before they open. It'll be great to have this amenity again.

I'm look forward to its opening as it becomes more time consuming to get across El Camino or to get anywhere when Middlefield's gridlocked.

@Dennis, it may not be a chain you're used to, but EPA does very much have a grocery store. The Mi Pueblo near the Ikea has a pretty solid produce section, full service butcher / seafood counter, and plenty of dairy, packaged staples, and household items.

The prices are sane, the service is solid, what exactly is wrong with it?

[Post removed.]

>> Mi Pueblo is what is termed more of a "corner mart" instead of a full fledged grocery store.

Have you ever been there? Please tell me what you think it does not have. If I did not have to go over the freeway and the Palo Alto Safeway was a little farther away I'd shop at Mi Pueblo. It is huge and it has low cost items, plus it has ready food to go, if you like Mexican style stuff most of which is pretty good and very low cost. Not the Whole Foods Prepared Food Section, but about 1/4 the price. Mi Pueblo has more stuff than the Palo Alto Safeway and the checkers are faster too. The produce is generally very nice, though I don't really know where it comes from or what chemicals are on it. I don't know they do organic or not. Really, it sounds like you have never been there.

An organic market with a prepared food section like Whole Foods would have me shopping at this new Edgewood place almost every day.

^ Nobody uses the Midtown Safeway anymore. It's too crowded.

Oh good. Given how much worse traffic has gotten, having a small grocery in walking distance is a huge plus.

So, carpoolers have been loading up the parking lot--I've been wondering why it was so crazy. Yeah,that needs to stop. Two-hour time limits that are enforced seem like the to go. The parking situation now is a deterrant.

[Post removed.]

[Post removed.]

EPA ... please remember that at least according to the corporate propganda Fresh Market did not fail, the parent company pulled all its stores from California. So, you are making that up about why Fresh Market "failed" who can trust whatever else you say? I think its great that East Palo Alto is developing some business. If you play your cards right like Mountain View pretty soon you will have a nice environment and people than Palo Alto! ;-)

Nearby Resident - PAPD doesn't cover Stanford. They have their own police, and a MOU with the county sheriff that deputizes their officers.

@Hmmm: You are wrong because I was on a ride-along with PAPD this year and was told that PAPD has authority on Stanford property. Stanford has their own police also.

re PAPD -- not to split hairs, but "Stanford property" could mean the campus or could mean their properties within PA city limits like the shopping center or research park. PAPD does cover both, if the calls I hear on my scanner are any indication. Sounds like our units respond to plenty of late-night "suspicious circumstances" on campus proper.

Do we have a grand opening date yet?

Yes, any news yet on opening?? I am at this center 3x a week and see no activity yet. Always concerning,
as I can't help but think this grocery deal will fall thru too! Fingers crossed! I hope we all will be advised
if this deal collapses, as well.

Also, r.e. the parking, it has eased a bit, since schools are out of session, but during the school year, it is basically a full lot!

The grocery store isn't scheduled to open for a few months. It must go through city permitting processes. The last I heard it could be November, but they are trying for sooner.

Thanks Sue.

Happy to report I saw a slew of construction/contractor vehicles on site yesterday and workers going in and out of the side door or the grocery. Whew! Seems to be really happening! SO tired of having that empty space!

Good to hear TutuB, thanks for the report.

The Palo Alto Golf Course may open in November also. Edgewood is sort of on the route over that direction. Speaking of long-term schedules, what ever happened to Wahlburgers on University? Sign out front still says "Opening Spring 2017". I guess that's an Elena Kadvany question, dating back to her Dec-2 blog post. Best of luck to Crystal Springs Produce; I'll be sure to check it out.