The turret at the corner of West Main Street and North Santa Cruz Avenue has been on Los Gatos postcards and the Chamber of Commerce logo for longer than most residents have lived here. For the last seven years, though, the building underneath that turret was mostly dark. Los Gatos Bar & Grill, the nightclub locals called LGBG, closed its doors, and the space that had once been the meeting house for the town's Odd Fellows Lodge in the early 1800s sat waiting for someone to figure out what came next.
Over that stretch, three someones did. Second Story opened on the ground floor late last year. Petals Creamery moved in right below it this summer. And on the second story, the space itself, Heritage Pub and Chop House opened in the final weeks of 2025, run by a couple who had no restaurant experience before this project and a chef who already had the lease one floor down.
That last detail is the one worth sitting with, because it's not really a story about a building filling up. It's a story about who Los Gatos hands its oldest addresses to, and the answer has almost nothing to do with outside money spotting a wealthy zip code on a map.
The Building That Waited for the Right Person
As the Los Gatan reported, Kristi Pearce-Percy runs Cuschieri Horton Architects. Almost a decade ago, someone approached her about using the La Cañada Building's second floor for her firm. That plan fell through, but it planted the idea that eventually became Heritage Pub and Chop House, a restaurant she opened with her husband Walker and with Yvonne Khananis, the chef who already owned Polenteria downstairs in the same building. Khananis worked alongside the Pearce-Percys for the better part of a year developing the menu, and the remodel itself began in August 2024, well before the doors ever opened to the public.
Walker grew up in Los Gatos and graduated from Los Gatos High School with the class of 1997. He later became a pilot, and he still flies C-5s part time with the Air Force Reserve while working as a commercial pilot for United Airlines. He also sits on the board of the Veterans Memorial & Support Foundation, which has been working to place a Flame of Liberty Memorial in town. None of that is restaurant experience. What it is, instead, is roots. The couple spent a year and a half turning a vacant nightclub into a place built around a menu of fish and chips, shepherd's pie, bangers and mash, and corned beef and cabbage alongside American classics, plus a back game hall with shuffleboard and arcade games and a members-only whiskey and tequila locker room built into one corner of the bar. The whole space, with its outdoor patio and banquet room, seats 180.
That's the pattern that matters here. The people who finally filled a building that outlasted a nightclub, a stalled architecture-office plan, and years of foot traffic walking past dark windows were not strangers to the block. One of them was already paying rent downstairs.
The Rest of Downtown Is Following the Same Script
The La Cañada Building isn't an isolated case. It's the clearest version of something that's been happening across downtown for the better part of a year, and the names behind each new opening tell the same story in different accents.
| Restaurant | Address | Who's behind it | The connection |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heritage Pub and Chop House | La Cañada Building, 2nd floor | Walker and Kristi Pearce-Percy, Chef Yvonne Khananis | Khananis already owned Polenteria one floor down |
| Dar Restaurant and Bar | 11 College Avenue | Brothers Milad and Chef Esam Shaqir | Already running Tamra Mediterranean Grill in Saratoga |
| Opelia | 25 E. Main Street | Chef Coskun Abik | Already runs Blind Butcher SF, Dunya Bistro, and Moka Coffee SF in San Francisco |
| Danbi Korean BBQ | Montebello Way | Owner Janet Shoh, partner Choi | Shoh runs two other Danbi locations in San Jose |
| Fiat Lux | North Santa Cruz Avenue | Owner Marcelo Tau | Picked the block specifically for its walkable business mix |
| Pergamon Bistro | 309 N. Santa Cruz Avenue | Owner Seyyat Zira | Filed for an alcohol license in early 2026, no opening date announced yet |
Dar Restaurant and Bar is the version of this story that plays out one town over. The Shaqir brothers had already built a following at Tamra Mediterranean Grill in Saratoga before opening a more elevated concept on College Avenue. Opelia's Chef Coskun Abik took over the old Sidecar Modern Tavern space at 25 E. Main Street after already running three restaurants in San Francisco, bringing Kurdish and Anatolian influences that he's described as a lighter counterpoint to Dar's Levantine menu. Danbi's Janet Shoh didn't need to learn the South Bay market, she'd already been serving it from two other Danbi locations in San Jose before opening in the former Montebello Market space next to Los Gatos Parkside.
Fiat Lux is maybe the most direct evidence of the theory. Owner Marcelo Tau has said plainly that he picked his North Santa Cruz Avenue block because customers there tend to move between businesses over the course of an evening rather than treating a visit as a single errand, according to reporting on the district's evolving business mix. That's not a chain-restaurant read on a wealthy suburb. That's someone who already understood how this specific street behaves before he signed a lease on it.
Why This Matters More Than a Longer Restaurant List
It would be easy to read all of this as just another year of downtown getting more restaurants, and the number alone is real: more than half a dozen new kitchens across roughly eighteen months on a strip that's a handful of blocks long. But a growing count doesn't explain why a building that sat empty through years of a hot Bay Area economy suddenly filled three times over in a single stretch, or why nearly every name attached to these openings already had some foothold in the region before they took the keys.
The La Cañada Building's story is that the couple behind Heritage had no restaurant experience, while Khananis already owned Polenteria downstairs. They spent a year developing a menu together before Heritage Pub and Chop House had served a single customer.
That's a different story than "downtown is booming," even if the two aren't in conflict. It's the difference between a neighborhood being discovered and a neighborhood being reinvested in by people who never really left it.
What to Watch Next
Vicinity, a fine-dining concept first reported by the Mercury News in January 2026, is still preparing to debut somewhere on North Santa Cruz Avenue, joining a top tier of the block already anchored by Forbes Mill Steakhouse and the Champagne-and-caviar pairings at Tasting House's Village Lane location. Pergamon Bistro's Turkish menu is still waiting on an opening date, though the alcohol license paperwork has already been filed. If the pattern holds, whoever eventually signs those leases will already have a name Los Gatos recognizes, even if the address is brand new to them.
The building with the turret took seven years to find its answer. Whatever fills the next vacant storefront downtown probably won't take that long, because the people who tend to say yes to this town are usually already standing somewhere close to the door.
If you've been watching downtown Los Gatos change one lease at a time and you're curious what that kind of momentum means for a specific street or a specific home, the team at Angelo Fierro Group tracks these blocks closely enough to talk through it with you directly.
