[conspire] Fry's Electronics Palo Alto, 1992-2019

[paulz at ieee.org]

 Yesterday evening, I encountered less heavy traffic enroute to a gathering in Sunnyvale.  I went to the Fry's store just to look around.   Many bare shelves and hooks.  In the back was a prominent display for Go Pro.  I think there might have been one camera.  The rest was just accessories.  Several aisles of shelves had been totally removed.  Only the traffic pattern in the carpet gave a clue as to what had been there.  The only department that was not mostly empty was appliances.  There were many stoves and clothes washers in boxes.  

A few minutes later and half a mile away, I walked by Central Computer.  All the shelves were full, and there were possibly more customers than at Fry's.  Makes me think that Fry's is following the business models of Radio Shack and Sears.

    On Wednesday, January 1, 2020, 1:09:11 AM PST, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:  
 
 The Palo Alto Fry's Electronics location has been expected to 
close on account of eventual redevelopment, but the end came sooner than 
most observers expected:  Management posted last Friday a notice saying
'Due to the end of our lease, our Palo Alto store will close permanently
on December 27, 2019.'
https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2019/12/27/the-era-of-frys-electronics-comes-to-an-end-in-palo-alto

I almost but not entirely miss the place.

The store was the largest of a number of tenants of the former Bay Side
Cannery, owned by an extraordinary immigrant named Thomas Foon Chew,
about whom see
https://www.losaltosonline.com/news/sections/community/177-features/60810- 
https://www.losaltoshistory.org/2019/04/history-museum-explores-the-life-of-cannery-pioneer-thomas-foon-chew/ .

Chew bought the 4-acre site in April 1918 and developed not only a
cannery and warehouse, there, but also a large warehouse and 19 houses
for employees.  The cannery was the third largest in the world, after
only the ones operated by Del Monte and Libby, processing peaches,
pears, and other fruit.  But Chew died of pneumonia in 1933 at age 42,
and the site was taken over by a peach-packing consortium, Sutter
Packing Company, finally closing in 1949.  It had employed 1,000 workers
until then.

Safeway bought the site, but decided not to use it, and it was passed
through various tenants, e.g., Coca Cola Company at one point used it as
a bottling plant.  These were replaced by mostly shipping, packaging,
and manufacturing tenants, and later technology-related firms (not just
Fry's) and offices.  At one point, part of the sprawling site was a
department store named Maximart.  Currently, it's being held by local
(Cupertino) family-owned commercial real estate development firm The
Sobrato Organization.

-- 
Cheers,                          "Maybe the law ain’t perfect, but it’s the only
Rick Moen                        one we got, and without it we got nuthin'."
rick at linuxmafia.com              -- U.S. Deputy Marshal Bass Reeves, circa 1875
McQ! (4x80)        

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