First off, we are in strong agreement about the importance of community, community services and community shopping.

Matt and Gail Taylor, the founders knOwhere and its sister companies, have long careers in architecture and education and have pioneered many community-focused projects across the US. They both live within walking distance of the knOwhere Store and consider this to be their home community. Matt went to school here in the 1950s and remembers Middlefield Road as a two-lane bicycle ride out to the NASA hangers.

As an Enterprise we are very aware of the often-negative impacts of change and the compromises to lifestyle and community that have taken place in the last 50 years. We have consistently turned down work that has promoted the deterioration of community as an "expense" of doing business.

We believe that the Palo Alto knOwhere Store is a community-serving resource. We designed it to be that and we are working to evolve with the community and become an ever more valuable asset to it.

As practicing futurists who build and supply environments for creativity all over the world, we know that both the concept and the practice of community is changing. The community that surrounds and uses the Midtown Shopping area is changing. This process of change cannot be stopped. It can, however, be provided with better guidance, with better design and a more conscious approach to the use of the consumer dollar.

We see this issue as, first and foremost, a design issue; secondly, as a "how do you vote with your dollars" question; and lastly as a candidate for government intervention.

There is no question that there are serious problems with the way the Shopping Area is evolving. We can change this if we design together as a community and take the concerns and interests of everyone into account. We can fight and compromise or we can collaborate and use this issue as an opportunity to reach a higher order.

What we cannot do is fight economic forces that are bigger than we are. What we should not do is construct a legal situation that will make it impossible for the Shopping Area to adjust to future economic forces. What we at knOwhere hope this community will not do is let knee-jerk reactions design our future by default.

We cannot change the economic forces but we do not have to be passive victims either. We can act to make the kind of community that works.

Founding Concept

Needed: an Objective Definition of Community-Serving

The Palo Alto knOwhere Store

A Personal Note from our Founders

Our History of Community Support

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