Developer and former owner of the Mt. Aukum Square Andy Hall has been in business in the Sierra foothills for 27 years. He used his retirement savings to build the business complex after scouring the entire state until in the 1980’s long-time resident Kenny Dean introduced him to the area.
Hall then hired a San Francisco research firm to survey the area and discovered high business potential in the Pleasant Valley area exceeding the Mt. Aukum site which was developed in 1995.
He decided to build two grocery stores, Hall’s Supermarkets, in both locations.
The Pleasant Valley store exceeded expectations grossing about $6 million in its last year under Hall’s ownership and would later be sold to Holiday Markets in 1997, which provides full grocery services to the foothill communities today.
“The Mt. Aukum store initially did quite well,” Hall said. “But when the two lumber mills closed, and I lost my pharmacy, we began to struggle.”
At that time, the square called Cedar Creek Shopping Center had Hall’s Supermarket, Pioneer Realty, the United States Post Office, a workout gym, a CPA office and later a pre-school.
Market closed
Hall closed Hall’s Supermarket in November of 1997 and eventually lost the property to the bank. He continues to do business as a real estate agent specializing in the foothill communities.
“Foothill business is a tough business,” he said. “You can’t attract large name companies like McDonald’s or Taco Bell, so you attract ‘mom and pop’ type of businesses. To succeed in a ‘mom and pop’ business you have to be really unique and very, very good.”
There are signs of life.
In early fall Mt. Aukum Road was the choice of a Corvette club — destination unknown. Every year and color was represented as they jetted along the road in a two-mile parade obviously enjoying the beginning of the foothill fall colors.
Driving down Bucks Bar Road visitors and residents can be met at any time with a large group of motorcycle enthusiasts headed to the foothills for a bike tour. It takes a skillful business approach to pull people off the highways.
Successful efforts
An example of a successful foothill business Hall gives is the Gold Vine Grill on the corner of Mt. Aukum and Grizzly Flat roads.
“Their food is wonderful and they carry local wines. And, the local wineries themselves are destination places where people come to the foothills because they’re good and unique.”
Another successful foothill business that does well is the Mt. Aukum General Store, which also caters to the ranchers with fuel, feed and supplies.
The tire shop on site has new owners, S & J Auto Service, which relocated from Plymouth last spring.
There is a breakfast café and bakery called Katie’s across the street from the general store.
Grays Corner offers sundries and fuel at the corner of Mt. Aukum and Fairplay roads. The newcomer at that location is Backroads Pizza, and is also the home of a long-time beauty shop called Shear Serenity.
The Somerset Store near the corner of Mt. Aukum and Grizzly Flat roads provides shoppers with all one might need from a handy convenience store. They sit south of the corner with the long-time real estate office of Keller & D’Agostini’s, the Gold Vine Grill and Crossroads Café.
Current Mt. Aukum Square owner Suzana Tai purchased the complex in November of 1999 through foreclosure. She initially bought the property to warehouse merchandise from China for her import and export business she started in San Francisco.
Tai brought with her a math degree from a Taiwan university, and later studied at the University of Texas in accounting and business working towards becoming a CPA. Before moving to California, she spent some time in the mid-west — Missouri, Tennessee and the Mississippi River region where she became familiar with flea markets.
“Some towns, like in Texas, the whole town opens a flea market,” she said of the annual events. That is where she got the idea to try a flea market in the space that used to house Hall’s Market.
Multiple chances
No longer working a large-scale import and export business, Tai has seen her fair share of business struggles at the Highway 16 location.
She had a restaurant for a short time and a bar called Chances. For nearly three years now Second Chances, a bar owned by Mike Specht is holding its own by catering to the locals and pulling business off the highway with its building and highway signs.
What Tai and Hall seem to have in common is that they really care about the residents of the area.
Hall found it especially rewarding to hire high school students for the supermarket as part of their on-the-job training through school.
“The kids I hired seemed to want the job more than other people I interviewed,” Hall said.
Tai feels the area needs more skilled people.
“We need a training center up here, like they have in Diamond Springs. We deserve one here,” she added.
Both Tai and Hall also agree that the residents of the area now are mostly retired people, and low-income folks seeking affordable rents in some of the more isolated, less commutable locations.
Hall said that from the points in between Pleasant Valley to Plymouth in Amador County retail business will continue to struggle in the coming years unless more jobs and families come.
“There is just not the population,” he said. “In a 5-mile radius, Pleasant Valley has three times the people that Mt. Aukum has. At the peak, I had 8,000 people come through my store in Pleasant Valley where Mt. Aukum may have had 4,000.”
State Assemblyman Frank Bigelow of the 5th District seems to be watching what is happening with the economy in the foothills, sending out a mailer to residents with the latest unemployment rate for June 2013. His figure shows a state unemployment rate of 8.5 percent and reports that the “foothill is nearly 9.3 percent, significantly higher than the state and national average.”
Bigelow calls the area “… home to essential natural resources, timber, mining, even hydropower produced here deliver essential materials to the rest of the state and beyond.”
Bigelow blames the “actions of Sacramento” for continuing to place “choking regulations, increased burdens on small business and high taxes are making it too expensive for employers to create jobs and keep their doors open in rural California.”
In the latest draft flyer Tai is putting together, she would like to see the community businesses get together to promote each other.
“I promote wine country tour information available at the flea market,” she said. “I think we should work together. ‘Tour, taste and find the bargains,’… I am putting that on my flyer.”
