The Building That Sat Empty For Seven Years Is Now Three Businesses Deep
August 20, 2026
August 20, 2026
Walk past the corner of West Main Street and North Santa Cruz Avenue and you can still see where the banners hung. For a full year, paper signs taped inside the windows of the La Cañada Building's upper floor promised something was coming, without saying what. Dog walkers on their way to the creek trail speculated. Regulars at Polenteria downstairs asked the staff, who mostly shrugged. The turret on that building shows up on postcards and on the town's own chamber of commerce logo, and its second story sat vacant for seven years after the nightclub Los Gatos Bar & Grill closed its doors.
That waiting is over, and it didn't end with one new tenant. It ended with three.
Heritage Pub and Chop House opened upstairs in the La Cañada Building last October, run by Los Gatos natives Walker and Kristi Pearce-Percy alongside Executive Chef Yvonne Khananis. Downstairs, Khananis already owned Polenteria, the connection that turned a stalled real estate plan into a restaurant partnership. Second Story, a cocktail bar, took another slice of the same building in late 2025. Petals Creamery moved in below that this summer. Three separate businesses, one address, filled inside of a year.
The building itself has history worth knowing before you order a drink there. It started life in the early 1800s as a meeting house for the Odd Fellows Lodge, a detail the Pearce-Percys built into the new space on purpose, with wall displays meant to hold onto that vintage character rather than erase it. Walker grew up in town and graduated from Los Gatos High School in 1997 before becoming an Air Force Reserve pilot and a commercial pilot for United. He's also on the board of the Veterans Memorial and Support Foundation, which is working to place a Flame of Liberty Memorial in town. None of that is restaurant experience. It's roots.
The La Cañada Building isn't an outlier. It's the clearest example of a pattern playing out across a few blocks of downtown.
A few doors down, Gardenia Los Gatos held its ribbon cutting on August 2 inside the Victorian at 115 North Santa Cruz Avenue, a building that has already lived several lives as a Chart House and, most recently, a restaurant called The Palms. Coffee and brunch service are already running, with dinner set to start this fall under Executive Chef David Intonato, previously of Pine Creek Cookhouse in Aspen.
On the same strip, Dar Restaurant and Bar opened this spring, run by brothers Milad and Chef Esam Shaqir, who already operate a restaurant in Saratoga and treat this as the more elevated version of that concept, pulling from Levantine, Italian, and Moroccan cooking. A few storefronts over at 25 East Main Street, in the space that used to hold Sidecar Modern Tavern, chef Coskun Abik's lease started at the beginning of this month for a Greek-Anatolian restaurant. Abik isn't new to this. He already runs Blind Butcher in San Francisco's Castro, along with Dunya Bistro and Moka Coffee, and picked up a Certificate of Honor from the mayor of San Francisco in 2025 for that first restaurant.
Two more are still to come. Pergamon Bistro, a Turkish concept from owner Seyyat Zira, has an alcohol license application filed for 309 North Santa Cruz Avenue, placing it near the pizzeria Oak & Rye, the Mexican restaurant Pedro's, and Ritual at Manresa, the fine dining collaboration tied to chef David Kinch. Vicinity, a fine dining concept, was announced back in January and is expected to add to the upper tier of dining already anchored by Forbes Mill Steakhouse and the champagne and caviar pairings at Tasting House on Village Lane.
Here's the current tally, if you're keeping track while you walk it:
The easy assumption about a small downtown filling up this fast is that outside money spotted a wealthy suburb and moved in. That's not what the names above show. Every operator on this list already had a stake in the area before they signed a new lease here. Khananis had two other businesses running in town. The Pearce-Percys grew up here. The Shaqir brothers built a following in Saratoga first and are betting those regulars will follow them over the hill. Abik has three restaurants and over three decades in kitchens behind him before choosing Los Gatos for his newest one.
That matters for anyone who lives here, because it changes what kind of staying power you should expect. A concept restaurant chasing a trend can close as fast as it opened. A chef who already has a reputation to protect, or a family with a hometown to answer to, is playing a longer game. The corner that sat empty for seven years wasn't waiting for the right idea. It was waiting for the right people to be ready.
There's a second shift worth noticing, and it's about hours, not names. Los Gatos Cafe, the longtime breakfast spot on North Santa Cruz Avenue, closes most days by 2:30 in the afternoon. That's always been part of the town's rhythm: strong mornings, quiet nights. Second Story is built for the opposite end of the clock, staying open Thursday through Saturday until 2 a.m. Heritage keeps its kitchen running until 10:30 on Friday and Saturday nights, with a happy hour every single day. Put those two facts side by side and you get a downtown that didn't just add restaurants. It added hours that didn't used to exist here.
None of this replaces the thing that already anchors the week. The Los Gatos Certified Farmers' Market still runs every Sunday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Town Plaza, rain or shine, with more than 40 vendors selling produce, honey, mushrooms, and prepared food. What's changed is what happens after you've made your loop through the market. A few years ago, the natural next stop was brunch and then home. Now there's a later half to the day: a glass of something at Second Story, dinner reservations at Dar or Gardenia, or a table at Heritage that's still serving at 10 on a Saturday night.
The town isn't becoming a different place. It's staying open later, run by people who were already here or who wanted to be.
If you're weighing what a Los Gatos address is actually worth to you right now, whether that's the block you already live on or one you're watching from a few streets over, Ashley Mateo can walk you through it with the same kind of local specificity. Get your instant home valuation and start the conversation with someone who knows exactly which corner just filled back up.
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