A lot has been happening at the northeast corner of Huntington Drive and Buena Vista, with the opening of the 99 Cent Only Store and now The Slaw Dogs. I stopped by The Slaw Dogs soft opening on March 26, had a great hot dog, met Ray, his wife, and son. I had a difficult time selecting my hot dog, but went with the Original, and loved every bite! While I ate, I decided on my next visit I’m going to get The Green Monster, with roasted green chile, chipotle mayo, grilled onion, pepperjack, and spicy garlic salsa.

This is The Slaw Dogs third location, with one in Pasadena and one in Woodland Hills. The space at 1355 Huntington Drive was formerly occupied by The Great Onion, who moved a few blocks east to 2150 Huntington Drive in a larger location.

The space was formerly occupied by The Great Onion. Note the addition of the patio to the site in the first picture.

The 99 Cent Only Store at 1327 E Huntington Drive in Duarte finally opened on March 15th with all the fanfare that has come to accompany the opening of these stores. The first nine customers in line were able to purchase a Phillips 22″ flat screen TV, a $230 value, for only 99 cents. The next 99 customers were able to purchase a scooter for 99 cents.

The location was previously occupied by a video store, then, for a short while, a Goodwill donation center, before the nearly complete rebuilding of the structure, including a new roof and facade.

Founded in 1982, 99 Cents Only Stores® currently operates 295 extreme value retail stores consisting of 217 stores in California, 36 in Texas, 29 in Arizona, and 13 in Nevada. 99 Cents Only Stores®emphasizes quality name-brand consumables, priced at an excellent value, in convenient, attractively merchandised stores. Over half of the Company’s sales come from food and beverages, including produce, dairy, deli and frozen foods, along with organic and gourmet foods. The 99 Cents Only Stores chain was acquired by Ares Management and the Canadian Pension Fund Investment Board for $22 per share in October 2011.

Duarte – Two 1,404 square foot spaces available, including one end cap. Each space is $2,200 per month, or about $1.57 per square foot per month. May be rented together or separately.

Easy access, good street frontage and visibility, with over 28,000 vehicles per day along Huntington Drive. Adjacent to Fresh & Easy, CVS Pharmacy, and Mount Olive Drive on/offramp of the 605 Freeway.

Permitted uses included auto parts, financial services, restaurants, fast food, maintenance and repair services (other than vehicle), postal and mailing services, printing and duplicating services, dance or martial arts studio, urgent care clinic, dentist office, medical supplies, and other uses with a conditional use permit. (Lessee to verify uses.)

Call Ken for tour of space (626-737-9079).

Super King Markets (will open their fourth location in Claremont at 436 Auto Center Drive, just west of Indian Hill next to Claremont Toyota. The Claremont location will be added to their locations in Anaheim, Los Angeles, and Altadena. Super King opened 10 years ago in Anaheim, and their mission is ”to serve the food needs of the people of metropolitan Southern California.”

For more information about the grand opening, go to http://www.skclaremont.com/, and for information about jobs, go to http://www.superkingmarkets.com/careers.

Super King Claremont Under Construction

Norms (I don’t know why they don’t use an apostrophe, but they don’t) opened Aug 23 in Claremont at the very busy intersection of Interstate 10 and Indian Hill. The restaurant has excellent freeway visibility with an approximately 50 foot “googie saw tooth” sign (in the middle of the picture above). For more about Norms “googie” architecture, check out their website at http://normsrestaurants.com/googie.html.

I stopped by there on a Saturday morning and there was quite a crowd inside and waiting for a table outside. I heard one patron say the wait was 30 minutes.

Norms Restaurant was started in 1949 by Norm Roybark near Hollywood & Vine in Hollywood. Today there are 18 locations all in Southern California. As their slogan says, “We never close.” The chain is still owned by the Roybark family.

Norms Under Construction

The “Coming Soon” sign has been replaced by a “Now Open” banner on the Marshalls at 2340 E Foothill Boulevard in La Verne, at the southeast corner of White Avenue. Marshalls was formerly located across the street behind the new Panera Bread. Marshalls has been a part of La Verne since 1998.

The Marshalls and eventually new Staples (on the right in the picture) are in the location formerly occupied by Vons, which moved down the street to the redeveloped site of the former K-Mart just east of Wheeler and Foothill. When Vons left, the vacancy in the shop space in the center seemed to increase, even though a recently redeveloped Target is located in the same parking lot to the east.

No word yet on the opening date of the Staples.

Frozen Ropes Glendora opened October 17 at 2244 E Route 66 in the former NAPA Auto Parts store that has been vacant for many years. The property is owned by the Glendora Redevelopment Agency, and the plan is to someday build a Class A office building on the property similar to the ones just west of the property.

Frozen Ropes (www.FrozenRopes.com) is a national franchise. The Glendora location offers batting cages, classes on hitting, fielding, pitching, strength and conditioning, and clothing. The facility has nine hitting/pitching tunnels according to their Facebook page  (http://www.facebook.com/FrozenRopesGlendora). Good luck!

The OfficeMax store at 826 West Arrow Highway in San Dimas closed this past Saturday, September 24th, 2011. I asked a couple of different employees why the store was closing, and I got two different answers. One said the lease was up, and the other said the rent was getting too high. Both answers could be true.

The big box office supply market is currently dominated by three chains: OfficeMax, Staples, and Office Depot. It is easy for customers to see them all as commodities, similar to the way they view grocery stores. A customer probably isn’t going to drive past one of these competitors and go out of their way to go to another one. So, location helps to drive market share. This appears to be a cost cutting move on the part of OfficeMax, whose shares have steadily declined this past year from a high of $18.74 on December 6, 2010 to a closing price of $5.33 yesterday. It doesn’t help that Staples is opening a new location just a couple miles east in La Verne at Foothill and Emerald/White. Staples dominates the market with a market cap of nearly $9.9 billion, while OfficeMax is about $452 million and Office Depot is about $609 million.

It could also be that the owner (Kimco) already has a new tenant to put into the spot at a higher rate. We’ll see.

The shell of the Ulta Beauty cosmetics store adjacent to Kohls is complete and workers are building out the interior. Ulta is now accepting applications on their website (www.Ulta.com) for employment at their latest location in Glendora at 1229 S Lone Hill.

Ulta describes themselves on their website:

We were founded in 1990 as a discount beauty retailer at a time when prestige, mass and salon products were sold through distinct channels—department stores for prestige products, drug stores and mass merchandisers for mass products, and salons and authorized retail outlets for professional hair care products. After extensive research, we recognized an opportunity to better satisfy how a woman wanted to shop for beauty products, which led to what we believe to be our unique combination of beauty superstore and specialty store attributes. We believe our strategy provides us with the competitive advantages that have contributed to our strong financial performance.

Today, ULTA is the largest beauty retailer that provides one-stop shopping for prestige, mass and salon products and salon services in the United States. We focus on providing
affordable indulgence to our customers by combining the product breadth, value and convenience of a beauty superstore with the distinctive environment and experience of a specialty retailer.

The new Glendora store joins their other nearby locations in Chino, Upland and Pasadena.

Under Construction

The new Applebee’s on North Citrus Avenue just south of Alosta is set to open on or about August 8, 2011. As the sign indicates, they are now taking applications. Call the number for more information.