The weather and climate along with excellent healthcare facilities has also allowed our aging population to live longer to enjoy living here in Silicon Valley.

It is an international magnet for professionals all over the world to come and work and raise their families.

What has changed over the years is the dynamics and geography of the area. Our local cities all began to prosper by being towns of orchards and ranches with, horses and buggies traveling along the dirt roads.

Businesses began in the late 1880’s and continue to flourish as specialty stores from lumber stores, canneries and factories to modern day businesses today.

But with the new chain stores many of these mom and pop businesses are struggling against the big box stores today.

These old time businesses are in ideal locations and therefore we see in many of our cities like Los Altos, Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Sunnyvale just to mention a few locations that large real estate developers are purchasing these businesses.

Many of these developers have and will continue to build new apartments and homes as well as commercial shopping locations all in close proximately to the downtown shopping area and locations close to VTA light rail, caltrains and bus transportation.

With opposition from neighbors and many asking why would they build more units in this economy?

The answer is simple, our economy will recover and as in the past Silicon Valley will thrive for the same reasons it has over the past century.

The key factors are location with an excellent climate. Excellent healthcare and education attracting people from all over the world.

With limited land to build new housing our cities must focus on these issues to assure adequate housing within the cities and transportation to work for our growing population.

My only hope is that when we lose one of these mom and pop businesses that a sign or some relic of the past allows us all to drive by and say to our next generation here once stood “XYZ” Company.