Sports Basement coming to Los Altos Center vacant Sears building

 

LACAN UPDATE   
 Sports Basement coming to Los Altos Center vacant Sears building

Friday 10/27/23 9:45 pm

The Bay Area regional sporting goods retailer Sports Basement will be moving into the Los Altos Marketcenter's   (aka Los Altos Center South)  vacant Sears building. The huge retail building includes three stories and a basement.

Los Altos Village neighborhood has been abuzz about workers working inside the long vacant Sears space for the last several weeks.  In his popular weekly newsletter,  Fourth District Councilman Daryl Supernaw wrote in the Friday October 27, 2023 edition   that he "will be meeting with the building owner and the new tenant next Tuesday to get all the details." 

 

LB4D News spoke with the onsite workers and confirmed that the new tenant will be Sports Basement. The Long Beach location will be Sports Basement’s thirteenth location, the second in Southern California.

The new Los Altos Marketplace Sports Basement is expected to open in the Spring of 2024.

Founded in 1998 with its first store in the Mission Bay neighborhood of San Francisco, the company has grown to twelve stores. Eleven Sports Basement’s stores are in the Bay Area. Last year it opened its first Southern California store in Fountain Valley.

Sports Basement is unique in the sporting goods industry because it embraces numerous retail strategies for a one stop shopping experience.  Building on a corporate culture of “community” and “fun,” stores are in repurposed buildings and are unique to that local community.   

Its massive stores in repurposed buildings sell in-line major brands, close-outs, and discontinued items as well as used goods (marketed as “pre-loved). The stores have a discount warehouse feel that reflect its “best brands at basement prices” company moto. 

photo courtesy of Sports Basement 

Like Trader Joe’s, Sports Basement custom builds most of its display shelves, racks, and signage.  It has its own metal and wood shop.

Sports Basement also rents sports and event equipment. Unlike REI and the long defunct Sports Authority and Sports Chalet’s rental focus on mainly skiing and camping equipment rentals, Sports Basement has numerous categories of “outdoor” equipment rentals. Rentals include a wide variety of sports equipment (from skies to pickleball) and sports clothing, plus travel (think car accessories and luggage) and a selection of outdoor event items as single rentals or whole everything-you-need packages.

The store also offers state-of the-art bike and snow shops offering tuning services.

The retailer also takes tradeins of customers “pre-loved” sports equipment for resale in its stores. Customer “pre-loved” items that do not meet the company’s reselling standards are accepted then donated. 

Online shopping for all store merchandise and rentals with in-store pickup available.

Shoppers will find lounge areas throughout the store and a  free-of-charge Community Space to hold group meetings or birthday parties. Using that space, stores offer speaker events, fitness classes, movie nights, fundraisers. Each store’s community space has a different name and theme like “The Dairy” in the retailers San Francisco’s Presidio store. Depending on the location, the Community Spaces range in occupancy from 50- 300 people. The Sports Basement website explains:

 Sports Basement is a hub for local clubs, non-profits, and corporate partners. Our stores, in all their reclaimed glory, transform into whatever our community needs them to be. We serve as meeting halls, call centers, movie theaters, art galleries, yoga studios...we could even be a wedding venue if you want. And you can reserve any of our community spaces at select stores, for free, by clicking the buttons below - it's as simple as that because being a part of our communities should be the easiest thing in the world.

The Dairy Community Space photo courtesy of Sports Basement 

Fostering a sense of community, Sports Basement supports sports participants group meet-ups for in-person and virtual events:

Join us at your local store for a run group, ride group, or a fitness class. Looking for more? Check out our full list of in-person and virtual events below.

Sports Basement’s loyalty program has a one-time $25 lifetime membership buy-in cost.  Called the “Basementeer’s” program, it offers 10% discounts on all purchases and 10% of the purchase price to the customer’s choice of school or charity.  When the Fountain Valley store opened, memberships in the Basementeer’s program was offered for free.

 

The Los Altos Center was part of the original Lloyd Whaley built Los Altos Village planned community.

Buildings within the Los Altos Marketplace have different property owners  with the Sears building being one of them.  Originally a Walkers Department Store when the center opened in 1955, it was rebranded a Broadway Department store after Walkers was bought by Broadway Department stores a year later. A third story was added to the building in 1964. In the 1990’s, the then Los Altos Center was redeveloped as a Redevelopment Agency project. At that time Sears bought the Los Altos Broadway property and again remodeled it.

Redevloped store mix from the 1990's    photo from LB4D News

After rival Kmart Corporation bought Sears in 2005, a slow decline began with the ultimate demise of both retailers after declaring bankruptcy in 2018. The ensuing bankruptcy left only 11 Sears open today.

This month in Burbank, the local Sears re-opened in its former Burbank Town Center space as the 12^th retail space.  Unfortunately, according to the reviews, the “new” Sears looks like a close-out bankrupt clearance store.  The other three California Sears are located in Whitter, Stockton, and Concord.