Stanford Shopping Center
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| Stanford Shopping Center
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| Mall facts and statistics | |
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| <tr><th>Location</th> <td>Palo Alto, California, USA</td></tr><tr><th>Opening date</th> <td>1955</td></tr><tr><th>Developer</th> <td>Stanford University</td></tr><tr><th>Management</th> <td>Simon Property Group</td></tr><tr><th>Owner</th> <td>Simon Property Group</td></tr><tr><th>No. of stores and services</th> <td>140</td></tr><tr><th>No. of anchor tenants</th> <td>4</td></tr><tr><th>Total retail floor area</th> <td>1.4 million square feet (GLA)</td></tr><tr><th>No. of floors</th> <td>1</td></tr><tr><th>Website</th> <td>http://www.stanfordshop.com/</td></tr> | |
Stanford Shopping Center is an upscale shopping mall located on El Camino Real at Sand Hill Road in Palo Alto, California. It is adjacent to the Stanford University campus and the underlying land is owned by the University. However, both the shopping center and the neighboring Stanford University Medical Center are actually part of the City of Palo Alto. The Center is approximately 45 minutes from San Francisco and 30 minutes from San Jose.
The outdoor center is 1.4 million square feet (130,000 m²) and includes four major department stores: Bloomingdale's, Macy's, Neiman Marcus, and Nordstrom.
The buildings that comprise the Center are owned by Simon Property Group, which manages the property and leases the land from the University.
The Center also includes over one hundred specialty shops, gourmet eateries and specialty services. Designed like a small European town, the Center is an open-air, street level shopping mall well-known for its extensive collection of trees, ferns, ivies, and flowers. The Center also showcases art by well-known California artists such as David Gilhooley’s “Merfrog Fountain”, Albert Guibara’s bronze “fat men” sculptures; Larry Binkley’s “Flying People;” and John Pugh’s 180 ft (55 m) long mural of an eighteenth century Parisian street scene.
Since its founding, the Center has maintained a distinctly elite market focus with its predominantly upscale retail offerings. It draws customers from throughout the Bay area and claims to be one of the top-tier malls in the country.
[edit] History
Leland Stanford and Jane Stanford endowed Stanford University with inalienable land, meaning the University cannot sell any of the Stanfords' original 8,800 acres (35.6 km²). After a drop in student enrollment and tuition revenues during World War II and then the sudden boom in enrollment after the war, Alf Brandin, the vice president for business affairs at Stanford, decided to look at real estate development as a way to generate revenue for the University.<ref name=Stanford>http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2004/julaug/features/shop.html, accessed August 18, 2006</ref>
In 1954, excavators broke ground on what was once Leland Stanford's vineyards. Nine buildings housing 45 businesses were built. The Roos Brothers clothing store opened as the first retailer in September 1955 and Blum's Restaurant opened on October 22, 1956, marking the completion of the center. Board of Trustees chair Lloyd Dinkelspiel and University President J.E. Wallace Sterling presided at the opening and Shirley Temple Black cut the first slice of a nine-tiered cake.<ref name =Stanford/> San Francisco department store The Emporium and luxury specialty department store I. Magnin & Co. were the original anchors.
The center opened with great success and became one of the largest sources of unrestricted income for the University.
Macy's California joined the center in 1961 and Saks Fifth Avenue opened a store in 1962. Further expansion came again in 1972 with the addition Federated Department Stores' Los Angeles-based Bullock's. Bullock's only lasted eleven years, closing its Northern California stores in 1983 and selling its Stanford location to Nordstrom, which opened in November 1984. Neiman Marcus became the sixth anchor in August 1985.
Saks Fifth Avenue closed their store in 1994 and was replaced by Crate and Barrel and Andronico's food market. The entire I. Magnin chain was shut down in 1995 and their Stanford location became a separate Macy's Men's Store. The Emporium location was shuttered in early 1996 after it was mergered with Macy's and Bloomingdale's took over the building, opening its first northern California location in November of that that year.
Throughout the years, the center has continued to evolve in terms of both tenants and construction and was managed by the University through its investment affiliate Stanford Management Company since 1991. However, in 2003, taking advantage of the high prices that shopping centers were fetching, the University's Board of Trustees agreed to sell the center for $333 million to Simon Property Group which, in turn, leases the underlying land from the University under a 51-year lease. the University's lease includes an annual rent equal to a 25% percent of the Center's revenues.<ref name =Stanford/>
[edit] References
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[edit] External links
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Places |
Arboretum • Arizona Cactus Garden • Cantor Center for Visual Arts • El Palo Alto • Frost Ampitheater • Green Library • Hoover Tower • Stanford Mausoleum • Stanford Memorial Church • Stanford Research Park • Stanford Shopping Center • |
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