The Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market chain took a big step toward moving into Oak Park, closing escrow last week on a vacant parcel at Broadway and 34th Street.

But it's unclear how quickly the British-owned firm will open that store, along with 18 additional outlets planned for the Sacramento area and dozens more throughout Northern California.

The company's push into NorCal – originally planned for next year – could go on hold because of the U.S. economy's turmoil, according to a recent story in the Times of London.

Fresh & Easy CEO Tim Mason was quoted saying stores will continue opening – at a slower pace – in Southern California, Arizona and Nevada, where 100 of the compact, no-frills markets are up and running.

But "there's a big cost" in expanding into Northern California, Mason said, so the company will stay "quite flexible" about launching here.

A Fresh & Easy spokesman in Los Angeles declined comment on the company's local plans.

The 1.6-acre Oak Park site was purchased for about $1.1 million from Mayor-elect Kevin Johnson's Kynship Development company.

The deal closed after almost a year of discussions on store design and other issues, reports broker Fritz Brown of Brown, Stevens, Elmore & Sparre, which represented Kynship in the deal.

The 15,000-square-foot store would be the second full-service grocery in Oak Park, joining a Food Source market that opened at Broadway and Stockton Boulevard in 1999.

Johnson, an Oak Park native who's developed several retail and residential projects in the area, said he was elated about a deal that could provide the community with "jobs, tax revenues and needed services."

The neighborhood store would also bring in much-needed fresh, nutritious foods, Johnson added. "This is all about healthy living," he said.

The only question now is how long it'll take Fresh & Easy to start building.

Sight unseen

The CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality says he's convinced Sacramento is a "faith-based community." But Chip Conley isn't talking about our church-going ways.

He's talking about advance bookings for his company's new Citizen Hotel, which opens Nov. 30 in a former office tower at 10th and J streets.

The hotel's 198 rooms will be fully booked for the opening weekend, he says. And more than 40 groups have made reservations for December events at the Citizen's Grange Restaurant, its mezzanine-level bar called Scandal and the seventh-floor terrace, where a massive tent was installed – by helicopter – over the weekend.

All that activity occurred while the Citizen was a dusty, downtown-traffic-jamming construction site. Those seeking early reservations "weren't able to see what they were booking," Conley says, "so they had to have a certain level of faith."

Toon town

As we've reported, each of Citizen's guest rooms will feature artwork by the late Newton Pratt, a Sacramento Bee editorial cartoonist for more than 30 years.

But the Bee's current editorial cartoonist, Rex Babin, also is getting a Citizen showcase.

He's been commissioned to draw a six-panel cartoon for a wall in the Scandal bar.

Babin calls his "noncontemporary" work an homage to Pratt. It starts with a naive young legislator arriving in the Capitol, where he encounters "nefarious and powerful" interests. He eventually succumbs to their influence and leaves town in disgrace.

Says Babin, "It's sort of 'Mr. Smith Goes to Sacramento.'"

Reach Bob Shallit at (916) 321-1049. Back columns: www.sacbee.com/shallit.