Diane’s Beach Wear, which had two stores in Broadway Plaza separated by a clothing store in-between for some reason, has closed one, right across from Nordstrom. This looks like prime real estate so I wonder what will replace it? As you can see by the photo below the other Diane’s Beach Wear store is open with no signs of closing so maybe it was just a lateral move over.
Davidson & Lichte The Watch Shoppe has closed in downtown Walnut Creek on N. Main St, however their shop on Broadway Plaza is still open so if you have repairs, a note on the door mentions to pick it up there.
I believe Davidson & Lichte own the building itself, as well as Vanessa’s next door so it’ll be interesting to see what will open in its place.
photo by Flickr user The-Tim
Thanks to realtor Brian Sparr for compiling this list of home and condo sales for Beyond the Creek. Sales for Walnut Creek, Lafayette, Orinda and Moraga are included. Both PDF and Excel reports are included below:
August 2012 Sales (PDF format)
August 2012 Sales (Excel format)
You may have noticed the real estate section lagging a bit but that’s about to change thanks to a new real estate guest writer coming on board who will provide some statistics and insights into the local Walnut Creek, Lafayette and nearby markets. His name is Brian Sparr and he is a real estate agent associated with Keller Williams Realty.
Born and raised in Montana, Brian now lives in Walnut Creek with his wife Nicole, a school teacher in Danville. They enjoy traveling and Brian competes in triathlons. He played division I baseball at Santa Clara University, majoring in Computer Science. He’s also an avid reader, and is an all-around nice guy when I met up with him at a Lafayette Starbucks recently.
Anyway, welcome to Brian and I look forward to his real estate posts about the local market. If anyone has questions for him post them here or check out his website at Sparr Properties.
The Treat Towers, located near the Pleasant Hill BART station in Walnut Creek has just been sold to MetLife for close to $120M according to the Business Times.
From the article:
In one of the East Bay’s biggest office sales this year, MetLife picked up up Treat Towers, a 378,000-square-foot, two-building, ten-story Class-A office in Walnut Creek from Equity Office Properties and TIAA-CREF.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed by the seller or buyer, but market sources said the price was close to $118.5 million, or about $313 per square foot.
They even have a fitness center with full shower facilities inside. Looks like Walnut Creek may have the strongest real estate market in the East Bay.
A couple of weeks ago I noted that the now vacant French restaurant Le Virage was painted over in Walnut Creek, and over the weekend a fire mysteriously ignited inside which was put out by the Contra Costa Fire Department.
The post about the Le Virage murals getting painted over contained this photo:
Notice how the plywood is not covering the entire window. This would allow someone to easily start a fire inside. For example, a curious child, or an arsonist. Has anyone seen the movie Goodfellas?
The question is, why was the plywood not fully covered? An inadvertent mistake, or?
As I exited off highway 24 to get to Mt. Diablo Blvd. in Walnut Creek recently, I noticed my favorite gas station, now a Shell station, has been closed and the gas pumps are gone. A closer look shows some major demolition taking place. Anyone know what’s going on here? Is it gone for good or was there some kind of structural problem that forced them to do this? They had really good gas prices so I hope they’ll be back.
Now that the Hungry Hunter restaurant in Lafayette at the corner of Pleasant Hill Rd. and Mt. Diablo Blvd. has been demolished, it looks like construction will soon begin of 23 townhomes by Signature Development Group. The land is owned by the Dudums, who own quite a few restaurants in Walnut Creek. Maximum height will be 35 feet. More information on the project can be found here and here.
To get permission to build the townhomes, the developer is paying for an art installation titled, “Over Easy”, by Roger Barry, to be displayed at the corner of Mt. Diablo and Pleasant Hill Rd.
This is the artist’s description of the artwork:
OVER EASY is a dynamically balanced form conceived to reference the experience of travel. Placed near the Southwest corner of Mt Diablo Boulevard and Pleasant Hill Road, OVER EASY will be visible to pedestrians and drivers alike from both roads. As one passes by, the sculpture will appear to wind and unwind presenting a different profile from each vantage point. The dark weathered Corten steel has great visual weight that will contrast with the surrounding light green ground planting and the redwoods behind. The paradox of this swirling heavy mass is the delight of the sculpture.
OVER EASY will be made of Corten steel with an interior support structure and base of stainless steel. It will be 90″ tall, 74″ wide and 77″ deep. The swirling band is a square in section 8 3/8″ on each side. The base will be bolted to a concrete footing and will be buried to allow plantings to grow around the sculpture. The base support will extend 12″ above the grade so that the plantings will not hide the sculpture.
Although some of you may never have dined at the French restaurant Le Virage in Walnut Creek, if you have ever driven down N. Main St. to get onto 680N you probably saw the exterior of the now closed restaurant because of the incredible murals painted around the entire building. Unfortunately, they have recently been completely painted over as pointed out by the editor of Diablo Magazine. When I stopped by to check it out, I noticed that one of the windows wasn’t completely boarded up, so of course I crept up and took an ominous look inside the broken glass window frame:
And this is what I saw (picture intact):
Here’s another view:
This would make for a great horror movie:
Scene 1: Group of teens smoking in the parking lot behind Le Virage at night
Teen 1: I can’t believe they painted it over!
Teen 2: Hey, check out the window, it’s not boarded up.Scene 2: Teens go closer to window and look inside
Teen 1: Cool!
Teen 2: I think we can squeeze in there, let’s go in!
Teen 3: I don’t know, looks a little spooky.
Teen 4: Oh, come on! What are you chicken?
Teen 3: No way, let’s do this.Scene 3: Teens squeeze through opening
Teen 1: Whoa, this is incredible!Scene 4: [?]
So how should scene 4 go? Any suggestions?
It’s really too bad that the murals are gone, although I guess the owners wanted to make it easier to sell. I’ll be making another post next week with before photos of the murals.