Whole Foods To Open In Sunnyvale

SUNNYVALE, CA — As part of this Silicon Valley city's premier development, Whole Foods intends to open a store below an AMC movie theater by the end of this year on the 36-acre CityLine project.

The stacked Whole Foods-AMC combination will be located at Sunnyvale's southwest corner of the development where Murphy and McKinley avenues meet. Whole Foods has signed a lease for that site, according to the city planning department.

Whole Foods declined to provide public comment on the project opening. The Silicon Valley location joins 42 other stores "in development," according to the Austin-based grocer's website.

The Amazon-owned premium grocer has stores scattered around the Silicon Valley, including Santa Clara, San Jose, Campbell, Palo Alto, Los Altos, Cupertino, Redwood City and Los Gatos.

But City Planner Noren Caliva-Lepe told Patch the project has "generated buzz" including public comment in the several meetings over the last decade since it represented a twinkle in the city's eyes.

Construction accompanies road work that continues on streets surrounding the mixed-use project where the outdated Sunnyvale mall once sat and was demolished years ago, according to DevCon Construction Disturbance Coordinator Ron Schneider. The site was home to a few steel buildings.

Continued work will require occasional street and lane closures on Taaffe Street and McKinley Avenue. Additional lane and street closures will occur on major thoroughfares, Mathilda and Sunnyvale avenues, to complete infrastructure improvements at different intersections.

The Town Center project lies in the core of downtown Sunnyvale just south of the Historic Murphy Avenue District bound by Mathilda, Washington, Sunnyvale and Iowa avenues. The approved plans call for establishing a six-block, mixed-use development that emphasizes retail, dining and entertainment.

The Town Center’s owner and developer, STC Venture, LLC, is a joint venture formed by J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Hunter Properties, Inc. and Sares Regis Group of Northern California.
In July 2017, STC Venture LLC announced a new name for the project: CityLine Sunnyvale.

Phase One encompasses 198 one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments with indoor and outdoor amenities, which include 24 affordable homes along Taaffe Street.

The city estimates the project to entail $20 million in public improvements involving the extension of streets as well as landscaping and traffic improvements.