Click here if you’re unable to view the gallery on your mobile device.
OAKLAND — After 50 years of selling eclectic art and gifts from around the world, Redwood Heights’ Pot-Pourri shop — a quirky, independent gem among the growing number of chain stores in the Bay Area — is closing because of a drastic rent hike.
Max Diez — who manages the business for his parents Andy and Julia Diez, who started it in 1969 — is in the process of liquidating the store’s merchandise, including jewelry, ceramics, blown glass and home decor. When the store runs out of merchandise, he said, that’s it.
“It’s unfortunate because our client base is beginning to feel the same way we are, that everywhere you look it’s the same types of businesses and they’re not small businesses,” Diez said in an interview. “It’s a whitewashing of all these little neighborhood areas.”
Over the years, the family has been able to keep up with the rent increases for the 4,400-square-foot storefront in the Lincoln Square Shopping Center on Redwood Road, Diez said. But when it came time to sign a new lease, the landlord — TRC Retail of Southern California — wanted about twice as much as what the businesses was paying before, he said.
“It’s beyond what a small business could ever maintain,” Diez said, without specifically saying how much the rent would have been with the increase.
Efforts to reach TRC Retail were unsuccessful.
Customer Sue Enger, who has been shopping at the store since it opened and watched Andy and Julia’s children grow up, said she’s heartbroken to see it go. She said it’s part of the character of Redwood Heights.
“It’s been the neighborhood go-to place for years and years for beautiful treasured gifts. They support local artists who do beautiful art, and it’s just really sad to see a store like this go out of business,” Enger said while shopping Tuesday.
Small retail shops throughout the Bay Area are struggling to keep up with rising rent and online competition. The number of retail businesses in Oakland with nine or fewer employees dropped about 6 percent from 2007 to 2017, according to the California Employment Development Department. Statewide, the number of small retail businesses dropped about 4 percent during that time frame.
Concerns were brought up in 2014 over the potential loss of Redwood Heights small businesses, when Safeway announced plans to replace the 50-year-old supermarket in Lincoln Square Shopping Center in the Oakland hills. Though residents and community groups generally welcomed the renovating of Lincoln Square, they didn’t want to see the small shops go.
Diez said he is considering starting Pot-Pourri up again at a different location, but is yet to find a place that’s affordable and would seem like a good fit for his type of business. His brother, Christopher, owns a Pot-Pourri store in Burlingame that remains open.
Diez said closing the store has been a “crazy emotional ride,” but that he and his family are grateful for the outpouring of support from the community — both now and over the years.
“It’s really bittersweet. We’ve seen all these amazing people come through the door, and the response has been incredibly touching,” Diez said.
Staff photographer Jane Tyska contributed to this report.
