This story first appeared in the Monday, Dec. 23, print edition of the Daily Post. To get all of the important news first, pick up the Post in the mornings at 1,000 locations.
BY DAVE PRICE
Daily Post Editor
West Elm, a home furnishings retailer owned by Williams Sonoma, is closing its store at 181 University Ave. in Palo Alto, which will create one of the largest vacancies in the downtown area.
Employees have been telling customers the high-end furniture and accessories store will close at the end of January, and a manager who declined to be named confirmed the closure to the Post Sunday.
Downtown landlord John McNellis also confirmed that West Elm is closing. But he said he is at work attempting to land a “cool new tenant, which hopefully will help re-energize University Avenue.”
The store, at the corner of University Avenue and Emerson Street, opened in 2012, three years after its last tenant, Magnolia Hi-Fi moved out.
West Elm rents one of the biggest retail spaces downtown at 37,000 square feet. It’s about the same size as the 37,500-square-foot Walgreens at Bryant Street and University that closed in 2020 and was replaced by Artsy Rugs. Restoration Hardware moved last year from its 7,500-square-foot space at 281 University Ave. to 60,000 square feet in the Stanford Shopping Center.
West Elm’s media relations department at its home office in Brooklyn, N.Y., didn’t return a request for comment. West Elm will continue to operate out of its stores in Campbell and Hillsdale Shopping Center in San Mateo.
The closure comes at a time when city leaders are trying to figure out how to reverse a decline in the downtown area. Office workers who used to sustain downtown retailers are now working from home. Stores have been closing, the remaining businesses have complained about a lack of cleanliness on city streets, and shoplifting has been on the rise.
City Council is taking aim at the problem by voting last week to have City Manager Ed Shikada begin the process of widening the sidewalks at a price of $40 million.
“The challenge we have is that the existing sidewalks are decades old, and until they are replaced, they will look decades old,” Shikada told Council on Dec. 9. “They also are built in a style with typical gray concrete with ribbons of brick … Quite frankly, it’s a dated look.”
Plans also show that the city would reduce street parking. The downtown would go from 177 angled parking spaces to 155 parallel parking spaces. Construction would begin in 2027 and finish in 2030.
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