Apple Pulls Another Store Proposal

Apple has asked that its proposal to open a store in Los Gatos (N. Calif.) be removed from the agenda of this week’s city planning commission meeting, according to city officials. A story in the San Jose Mercury News quotes town attorney Orry Korb saying, “It has something to do with the timing of the store opening.” He said that Apple still wants to open a store downtown, and intends to re-submit its planning application later. Apple intended to combine two spaces at 23-25 N. Santa Cruz Ave. into a 5,356 square-foot store. However, the city has very strict so-called “formula” store regulations, intended to insure the diversity of central business district shopping. The current space is considered non-formula, and its conversion by Apple would boost the percentage of downtown forumula stores from 14 percent to 15 percent. Apple’s representative on the Los Gatos project is David Itzla, who works for Chestnut Company, which is providing, “supplementary project management services to the in-house team building new stores,” according to the company’s Web site. The company’s hiring seems to indicate that Apple’s retail expansion has grown beyond Apple’s current in-house project management staff.