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When Malika Junaid and her partner decided to relocate their architecture firm from Palo Alto to downtown Mountain View, they thought it would be a fairly straightforward process to get the building permits and be back in business.
They expected it to take about three months tops, as they only planned on doing interior renovations to the office. A year later, M. Designs Architects had not yet opened its doors to the public.
We cannot afford to have months and months of delays over minor issues.
You You Xue, restaurant owner
“Even our realtor told us not to buy in Mountain View,” Junaid said in July. “Since last year, we’ve not been able to do anything. We’re working remotely right now. We’re meeting our clients at their homes. We’re actually losing business and it’s been very frustrating.”
Junaid has not been the only small business owner bogged down by permit delays in Mountain View.
You You Xue, a restaurant owner, also voiced his frustrations with the city’s permit process at a City Council meeting in January. He said that he was paying $22,000 a month in rent at San Antonio Center but could not move forward with plans to open his restaurant.
“We cannot afford to have months and months of delays over minor issues,” Xue said, noting that the city’s review mainly focused on the color of the restaurant’s outdoor awnings and dining umbrellas.
Mountain View has long positioned itself as a city that supports economic development. There are about 5,600 active businesses in the city, according to the most recent annual budget report. Several tech behemoths, like Google, Intuit and LinkedIn are headquartered in Mountain View as well as prominent startups like Waymo and Nuro.
But for many small businesses looking to establish a storefront, it has not been easy gaining a foothold in Mountain View. The permit process is cumbersome and time consuming, they say, pushing many to the brink of giving up altogether.
“I think if I was just running this small business on my own without my husband’s backing, either we would have folded and we would have lost everything, or we would have had to sell this place and move on,” Junaid said.
The city’s response
Every year, Mountain View processes between 3,500 and 6,500 building permits of all types. About 20% to 25% of these are for commercial developments, according to Mountain View Community Development Director Christian Murdock.
For a city of its size, this is a large number of permits to process, and occasionally problems come up, Murdock said.
Part of the issue is that before any project begins, there are a big range of “unknowns,” he said. Each building is unique and entails a different set of considerations based on its location, age and construction type, among other things.
The permit process helps manage these unknowns, ensuring that buildings comply with safety, zoning and code requirements, many of which are mandated by the county and state. But it’s often the last thing people tend to think about when starting a business, Murdock said.
We’re trying to build trust, like please call us, engage with us.
John Lang, Mountain View Economic Vitality Manager
As a result, people are taken aback when the process does not go as smoothly as they anticipated. They might not be able to build what they want or required improvements might take longer than expected, Murdock said.
But these cases are more the exception than the rule, according to Murdock.
“If you put the number of issues that people have had or problem cases in context, it’s a very small number, which I think reflects the care and attention that the city’s process has to try to get people through the process with clear instructions (and) clear and timely reviews,” he said.
Applying for approval, more than a dozen times
To open a brick-and-mortar business in Mountain View involves a lot of steps, even for seemingly simple projects that don’t require major construction or a change in the building’s use.
Junaid did not anticipate that an office remodel would take so long, in part because the renovations were not extensive, but also because the building was being used for the same purpose. The previous occupants were architects too.
You can’t pull a permit on a place that you’re not renting. And the only way to get a permit is to rent… So, it’s not even like a Catch 22. You’re just out money.
Jason Reynolds, owner of Jinxbot
It took about three months to receive a provisional use permit and about six months for a building permit. But the permits were for only one part of the property, as the building spans two sites, 382-384 Castro St.
Junaid and her partner applied for another provisional use and building permit after the first set was approved. They also applied for a demolition permit, an excavation permit and lot line adjustments.
According to state law, cities must respond to every permit application submission within 30 days. Still, this can add up to monthslong delays if applications need to be resubmitted because they are incomplete or comments need to be addressed. The 30-day period is triggered with every resubmission.
The way the process is set up makes it difficult to get permits, Junaid said, even though city staff are trying to help them, she added. A timeline provided by Junaid shows that she and her partner have submitted permit applications more than a dozen times for approval. In August, they partially moved into their office but still are not done with the permitting for the other side of the building.
Lots of risk, no guarantees
For small businesses, another major hurdle in opening a storefront is that they need to purchase or lease a property before they can start the process of actually getting a permit.
“You can’t pull a permit on a place that you’re not renting. And the only way to get a permit is to rent… So, it’s not even like a Catch 22. You’re just out money,” said Jason Reynolds, owner of Jinxbot, a 3D print shop in Mountain View.
Reynolds started his 3D print business in his garage nearly 10 years ago; as his clientele grew, Reynolds decided he was ready to open something bigger. The opportunity came up when a dry-cleaning business vacated its storefront at 693 Calderon Ave.
Reynolds took over the site without a hitch, but then the next five months turned into a nightmare, he said. The problems started when he tried to apply for a “change of use” permit. The site was classified a dry-cleaning establishment and Reynolds wanted to convert it to retail.
There was a lot of confusion from city staff at the time, who erroneously equated the 3D print service to a paper printing press with massive equipment. This was during the height of the pandemic, and Reynolds said it was difficult to have conversations with staff, even on the phone, since they were not coming into the office.
The permit also required a full set of architectural plans for the building, which was constructed in the 1970s. No plans existed and Reynolds had to get them drawn up, which cost $10,000, he said. This was on top of paying rent for a storefront that was not operational.
Adding to the difficulties, it was never clear to Reynolds what was needed for the next step in the approval process. It was either a thumb’s up or a thumb’s down, he said, with no step-by-step guide to help him navigate the requirements.
Instead, the city provided a lot of information on every conceivable topic, and it was up to Reynolds to figure out what fit his situation, he said. About five months later, with no alterations made to the building except for some added shelves, Reynolds received a change of use permit for his business. This was after being denied the permit several times, he said.
Planning for improvements
Around the time that Reynolds was trying to establish a storefront, Mountain View hired a consulting firm, the Matrix Group, to look at its development review processes and provide recommendations to improve it. The Matrix report, which came out in 2021, identified 53 areas for improvement relating to staffing, technologies, procedures and services.
According to the report, the amount of time that it took the city to process permit applications was one of the biggest sources of frustration for respondents. More so than other groups, business owners and homeowners also expressed confusion about the permit process requirements, as compared to property developers, engineers and builders.
Since then, Mountain View has taken steps to implement the report’s recommendations. This is occurring in phases, depending on staff time, available resources and the complexity of the recommendations, according to the city.
One of the most visible improvements to the development review process has been its digitization, which has brought it into the 21st century, said Assistant Community Development Director Lindsay Hagan.
Last year, the city launched an online platform, ePermit MV, that has facilitated the electronic submission of certain kinds of permits. Applicants can see the status of their projects and easily pay fees, Hagan said.
The city also has revamped its website, making information more accessible and transparent for the public. It uses less jargon and tries to reach people in a way that they can understand, Hagan said.
For business owners, these are welcome steps to improving the permit process but stop short of what is actually needed, they say, which is an expedited system to help them move their small-scale projects along.
Something like this existed before the pandemic, according to Hagan. It was a one-stop program where applicants could schedule an appointment with staff who would check their project “live” and then provide comments that could be addressed immediately.
It was a shorter and faster review process and was particularly helpful for small businesses, but the program was put on pause because of staffing shortages. The aim is to have it back in service next year, Hagan said.
In the meantime, Mountain View has implemented another kind of hands-on resource, a business ambassadors team to help people navigate the permit process. “It’s a chance for us to engage across divisions and departments with a business and say, ‘Okay, what are you trying to do? What’s the pathway?’ And take that journey with them,” said Economic Vitality Manager John Lang.
The idea is to educate people about the permit process and act as a facilitator, while also helping set expectations, Lang said. For these reasons, he encouraged business owners to reach out to city staff early on, ideally even before selecting a storefront, to talk about what is possible.
“Sometimes by helping you, it’s actually trying to prevent things, and sometimes that is a ‘No’ answer. Like, ‘I’m sorry, you’re not going to be able to do that thing here.’ But we’d rather save you the time and hassle and the money upfront than having you get into that process,” Lang said.
“So really, we’re trying to build trust, like please call us, engage with us,” he added.
Vacant Mountain View building condemned after 3 people, small fire found insideJanuary 16, 2026 5:15 pm
Going to C with the COC! The Chamber of Commerce / lots and lots of small business people / is going to have a City Council Candidate’s Forum later today. I’m assuming The Voice is going to have a reporter there.
So U don’t have 2 B there 2 C 4 yourself what transpires.
It’s embarrassing how anti-business the City Staff is. They nitpick colors of umbrellas and bricks. Meanwhile, half of Castro Street has empty storefronts. Talk about missing the forest for the trees! Whom do we need to vote out of office, to get this actually solved?
Are we still waiting on Nick the Greek to open? I forgot to check in the last couple weeks. Actually saw progress the other day. It has to be the most egregious example.
I’m not surprised to hear this. My own experience has been that getting a building permit for a residential project is *way* more time consuming now since everything went online after the pandemic hit as compared to before the pandemic. It’s so bad my contractor urged me to go forward without permits since he predicted considerable delays. I went with the permits anyway, but he was right about the long delays. Mountain View used to be one of the easiest to work with; now it’s one of the hardest (or so I’m told).