By Linda Taaffe

A new name and the addition of a popular gourmet food store are two key elements in a plan to revitalize a failing shopping center on Los Altos’ southern border.

Foothill Plaza on Homestead Road is slated to open a Trader Joe’s food market in a revamped mall that will be called Foothill Crossing Shopping Center.

The Los Altos City Council unanimously approved the project last week without any changes, giving property owner Thomas Harrington the green light to move forward.

The project required a special use permit for the operation of a food store and a sign variance.

The plan includes replacing the former Dijon restaurant site adjacent to the Chevron gas station with a 11,089-square-foot Trader Joe’s market that will have a tower.

The former site was 4,500 square feet.

The council also granted Harrington a variance to replace an existing 20-foot sign with a 28-foot sign, such as the one located at Rancho Shopping Center and agreed to allow him to landscape the mall with palm trees.

“This will bring life to a dead shopping area. It will make a great deal of difference to that area of Los Altos,” Harrington said, calling the mall “a pretty bad piece of architecture. You can’t tell if it’s a hospital or a shopping center.”

Foothill Plaza has had a chronic vacancy problem since the city banned ground floor office space at its retail centers in 1987.

As many as three out of the plaza’s 10 storefronts have been vacant at any given time over recent years.

Property owners asked the city for a code amendment in 2000 to allow limited ground floor office uses in the shopping center to help revitalize the center.