Apartment Choice

College Terrace Market , the longed-for grocery store at 2100 El Camino Real in Palo Alto, finally opened on June 14, but the hoped-for crowds of customers have been slow to materialize. After a promising opening day , the market initially averaged only about 60 customers a day, said Ron Jensen, the market's director of operations. In the last couple of weeks, that number has grown as employees have moved into the First Republic Bank offices in the center's upper floors. But Miki Werness, one of the market's partners, estimated the market needs more than 200 customers per day to thrive. He said he did not anticipate that a summer opening would be so slow, adding that he anticipates many more customers will come with the start of the school year. The shaky start — and other factors potentially conspiring against the market — has customers and neighbors in College Terrace concerned . Under the planned community (PC) ordinance by which the College Terrace Centre devel...

The long retail spine of Sydney Road, Brunswick, just north of Melbourne's CBD, was once a prosperous trading outpost on the way to the goldfields. These days it's a bohemian mix of variety stores, op shops, halal butchers and Lebanese bakeries. Take a side street to the west, however, and a different picture emerges. Sandwiched between Sydney Road and the Upfield train line is an area undergoing rapid and widespread transformation. Light industry is fast being replaced by mid- rise apartment buildings , their inhabitants attracted by the short commute into town and cheaper prices than in the city's south-east. The quality of these units is, on the whole, depressingly bad; think poor ventilation and bedrooms that "borrow" natural light (a weasel word for being dark and windowless). The occasional jazzy façade tries feebly to make up for otherwise cheap construction amid a chorus of greys. At ground level, carpark roller doors alternate with mean pocket garden...