The largest of the deals involves Pet Food Express, a chain with 36 stores that's expanding for the first time outside the Bay Area.
The Oakland-based company also is opening this year at Sacramento's Loehmann's Plaza.
Pet Food Express is something of a Whole Foods for dogs and cats, selling only food that's free of artificial ingredients and animal byproducts.
Each of its stores has self-service pet washes and most have cats and dogs available for adoption.
Why the move to the Sacramento region?
"There are lots and lots of people there who think of their pets as family," says founder Michael Levy.
At Fountains, Pet Food Express will take a 13,400-square-foot space being vacated by sporting goods retailer Orvis. Orvis is relocating to smaller Fountain digs that are "more their prototypical size," says Paul Bollinger, an exec with the Peter P. Bollinger Investment Co., which owns the Fountains and Loehmann's.
Mikuni, meanwhile, is opening a sushi restaurant – its ninth – at the Fountains by April.
Those developments follow the news that Yard House has chosen the Fountains for its first Sacramento-area restaurant. It opens in July.
Bollinger says the various deals bring the 300,000-square-foot Fountains center to 98 percent occupancy just 2 1/2 years after its opening.
The newcomers, he says, "put us even more on the map as a place to go to for new restaurants and retail activity."
