Nick Q. Responds - UPDATED

We received a couple responses to yesterday's post about the letter in the November 12th edition of the Claremont Courier from one Laura Jaoui, who claimed that she had received no response to two calls she made inquiring about leasing space in the Claremont Village Expansion.

Jaoui's letter was followed by a response, again in the Courier, on November 22nd from Jonathan Tolkin at the Tolkin Group, the Village Expansion developer.

One person who contacted us yesterday was interested enough to take some photos of the empty shop space at the Expansion, that area west of Indian Hill and between Bonita Ave. and First St. Our other respondent was Nick Quackenbos, the project's listing realtor.

In the interest of both conserving valuable blog space and maximizing irony, we've combined the photos with Quackenbos' email.

Is Nick being sarcastic in his note to us? Sexist? We can't tell:

DATE: Wednesday, December 3, 2008 5:43 PM
SUBJECT: Claremont Village Expansion
FROM: "Nick Quackenbos"
TO: Claremont Buzz
Cc: pweinberger@claremont-courier.com, jtolkin@tolkingroup.com

Click to Enlarge

Gentlemen:

I have noted with interest your comments regarding the response to Ms. Jaoui’s letter to the Editor of the Courier, Mr. Tolkin’s response to her calls and my supposed lack of response. I state unequivocally that my office has never received a call from Ms. Jaoui: it is only in our self-interest—financially, if for no other reason—to return all calls. Each is a potential lease, a potential deal, potential income. We don’t let things like that slide by.

Now, please read the letter below, sent to Ms. Jaoui on November 19. To date, no response. Interesting. Also, to date, no response to Mr. Tolkin’s letter to the Courier. Even more interesting. Perhaps if you are able to contact the lady you could encourage her to follow through, as we have. As I say in my letter to her, perhaps she has useful ideas which we would love to hear.

We will appreciate your help with this matter.

Sincerely,

Nicholas C. Quackenbos,

November 19, 2008

Ms. Laura J. Jaoui
[Address redacted]
Claremont, CA 91711

Dear Ms. Jaoui:

I read you letter to the Courier concerning the Claremont Village Expansion and the lack of communication from the Developer. I can only presume that your calls were made during the earlier stages or the wrap-up stage of the project and in the flurry of that activity your messages were mislaid.

In any event, I am now the listing broker for the project. I would be pleased to review with you its current status, show you the available spaces and, most importantly, listen to your ideas on what might help make this a better development. It is often input from observers such as you—I’m presuming you are outside of the real estate industry—which give us insights that we do not have or gloss over.

Please call to arrange a meeting or to at least have a chat on the phone.

Sincerely,

Nicholas C. Quackenbos, Broker
Quackenbos-Bell Commercial Real Estate

[Italics added -ed.]

UPDATED - 6:44A

The Daily Bulletin's David Allen has a post on his blog about another Village Expansion (Village West) closing. Allen writes that Cold Stone Creamery closed this past weekend:

Cold Stone Creamery in Claremont's westside-of-Indian-Hill development (the name for which nobody can agree on) closed Sunday, the latest in a string of failures there that includes children's clothing store Chloe and Hunter and women's clothier Peyton Grey.

(Tally for Men, meanwhile, has had a "going out of business" sale since last spring. It's like a hammy death scene that goes on and on.)

Allen remarked that he was glad to see that if only one ice cream parlor could survive, he was glad it was Bert and Rocky's. Amen to that, David.