Eye Care That’s Good as Gold
Although Dr. Gary Gold & Associates Optometry, Inc. takes pride in its amazing optometric technology and high-end eyewear, nothing it offers would make you see cows grazing across the street when you leave the downtown Sunnyvale office wearing your brand-new spectacles.
But Dr. Gold says that’s precisely the sight that greeted the first clients of the practice he now owns. Initially opening its doors 1955, Dr Gold bought the practice from a retiring optometrist in 1981. He moved the office to its current location, at 130 S. Sunnyvale Avenue, between Washington and Evelyn Avenues, in 2008.
That makes Dr. Gary Gold & Associates one of the oldest continuing small businesses in downtown Sunnyvale, perhaps only behind Walt’s Cycles.
The days of pastoral old Sunnyvale are gone and replaced with the much-loved, historic Murphy Avenue, and Dr. Gold’s business has certainly changed with the times.
High tech, high style
“We keep pretty high tech here,” Dr. Gold said. “We keep ahead of the curve as best we can.” The practice is actually two businesses in one, Style Eyes Optique and Dr. Gary Gold & Associates Optometry. Through Style Eyes Optique the office provides many exclusive frame lines in addition to prescription and non prescription sunglasses such as Maui Jim and Oakley.
The optometry side offers a wider range of vision services than found in most offices, from routine eye examinations, prescribing glasses and contact lenses to the treatment of eye infections. They also treat ocular diseases such as glaucoma and manage macular degeneration enhanced by Zeiss imaging technology. In addition, the practice also co-manages refractive surgeries such as LASIK and cataract surgery by working with outside ophthalmologists.
Services are available Monday through Saturday. To make an appointment, call 408-736-3802, and visit drgoldeyes.com for more information.
The practice also makes a great effort to keep up in the style department and to offer great variety of choices. So much so, Dr. Gold said “since we really love and are continually adding new and exciting frame lines, it becomes challenging to decide which designer lines to keep and which ones to give up.”
Six optometrists
Dr. Gold did his undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley where he developed an interest in optometry. He was attracted to optometry, he said, because it’s “a medically oriented people business without the downside that medicine sometimes presents. By choosing graduate school at UC Berkeley’s School of Optometry I also got to continue going to school at Berkeley where their optometry school was considered the best.”
With six optometrists on staff, mostly from UC Berkeley, he says it’s one of the larger practices in Santa Clara County. While most of their patients come from the surrounding neighborhoods and nearby computer industries, there are many who travel from out of town, out of state, and even as far as Hong Kong to continue to be seen by Dr. Gold.
In 2014 Dr. Gold was awarded the Outstanding Business Person of the Year Award by the City of Sunnyvale. As if Dr. Gold’s longevity doing business in the community and his sponsorship of local youth organizations weren’t proof enough of his commitment to downtown Sunnyvale, the San Jose native has taken an active role in the Sunnyvale Downtown Association Board and appreciates being a part of the innovative and growing Sunnyvale community.