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Back in 2017, the restaurant buildings of Chez TJ and the Tied House brewery could have been razed as part of plans to redevelop their sites into a new office project.
Now two years later, both buildings are being considered for preservation as the newest additions to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. The California State Historical Resources Commission is scheduled to review both buildings for possible recognition late next week.
The call for the two buildings’ preservation is being spearheaded by the group Livable Mountain View. In her application, Livable Mountain View member Jean McCloskey pointed out the former home now occupied by Chez TJ is an excellent example of Queen Anne-style architecture.
“Of course, these buildings are historic. They’re some of the few structures left in Mountain View that are rare and unusual,” said Livable Mountain View member Mary Hodder. “When you know the background of these buildings, then it becomes this anchor piece of Mountain View history.”
The residence was known as the Weilheimer House after its former owner, Julius Weilheimer, who was considered one of Mountain View’s most prominent citizens in the early 20th century, she said.
As for the Tied House, its building was touted as a remarkable mix of Hamburg warehouse and Spanish Revival architecture styles. The structure was originally built as the Air Base Laundry — a private laundry business named after the nearby Moffett Field. Over the years, a number of subsequent laundry and dry-cleaning businesses took over the site before it was used as a warehouse and then a retail shop for lighting decor. Starting in 1988, the Tied House renovated the building and moved in, and the brew pub has been there ever since.
The push to get historic recognition for the two buildings comes as both restaurant owners are still aiming to redevelop their adjacent parcels. In 2017, a narrow majority on the City Council rejected plans to replace the buildings with a 41,000-square-foot office project. Under that plan, the Tied House would have been demolished while the Chez TJ building would have been relocated to a nearby site.
The owners of both restaurants have recently said that they still intend to redevelop, although they said it could take much longer than they had originally planned.
At the Tuesday, Jan. 22, meeting, the Mountain View City Council acknowledged the push to seek historical recognition for the two locations, although city officials opted to stay neutral on the issue. A draft letter to the State Historic Preservation Office noting the city was not taking any formal position was approved by the City Council unanimously as part of the meeting’s consent agenda.
That “nearby site” — the one the developers arranged to have the Weilheimer House (or what was LEFT of it) moved to — has been sold to another owner, so it’s no longer the property of the person/people who originally agreed to the move. We haven’t heard anything from the developers or WH land owners about a Plan B, if there even is one.
Both restaurant owners had to have been aware for a long time that Chez TJ and the Tied House were located in historic buildings, on historic sites (by Mountain View standards). It’s hard to feel sorry for them. Maybe the buildings’ owners can repurpose them, preserved, for more financially rewarding endeavors, which is clearly their objective.
A few clarifications about Lenny’s comment:
I spoke about a half dozen times over a year long period with the State of CA toxins project manager overseeing reporting and monitoring on the Tied House / Airbase Laundry toxic site.
In multiple conversations with the project manager, she confirmed for me that Tied House and the toxin situation is stable. If nothing happened (ie no construction, removing building and pulling out soils and putting in underground garage), the state would continue to monitor site and just require the ventilation system in there now, as that is considered safe.
A bit of background on the site: First, Tied House as the “Airbase Laundry” from the 1930-late 50s was a French Laundry, which doesn’t use chemicals. Next door, Fremont cleaners (now a video editing shop) was a chemical based dry cleaners. Tied House owns the alley way between the two building, but Fremont cleaners had a roll up door at the alley way.
The PM told me the Fremont Cleaner site likely used the TCE chemical that now exists below ground at both Fremont and Tied/Airbase. And Fremont is suspected of having dumped massive amounts of TCEs at their alley way door (the concentrations in testing reports there appear to support this) as well as in the back of their shop. These chemical migrated around, some north to underneath the Franklin St housing and some east to the Tied House. Chej TJ doesn’t appear to have had much testing and the TCEs don’t show up on reports much, that far from the Fremont/Video shop. The toxins also likely go all the way down to the water table, which is this area starts around 100′.
Right now, Tied House has to run a ventilation system to pull up and blow out TCE fumes to keep the air clean and acceptable for a restaurant and employee use of the building. It not be acceptable for housing.
If Tied were knocked down, and the Minkoff or similar project were to go in, removing 20′ of dirt would still leave all the rest of the toxins at the site. So then, the garage and new offices or whatever would have to put in a massive shied below the concrete underground garage, but the toxins would still leak through requiring the *exact same ventilation system*.
So no different than Tied House now. So developers who say they are going to cleanup, yes.. could clean 10′ down, 20′ down. But they wouldn’t excavate away the problem. And Fremont / Video shop, which Minkoff considered and actually did toxic testing and reporting with the state, decided not to use that side because it’s a total mess. Lots and lots of TCEs and they didn’t want to get into even more chemicals than the ones that leached over to Tied / Airbase.
So not redeveloping or redeveloping changes nothing, other than 10 or 20 feet of dirt might be removed. But the toxins stay, and continue to require ventilation. So no big value to Mountain View to have a developer pull up that small amount if contaminated dirt, because there’s still another 80-200′ of dirt directly below with TCEs. Nice to have the 20′ gone. But not much change.
And if the loss is the amazing ONE of A KIND building: the Hamburg warehouse style, remixed with California Spanish materials, in one of the very first “tilt up” wall experiments that is an architectural marvel, it’s not a great trade off.
Wow! That’s an impressive piece of research, Mary. Thanks for taking the time to dig into the true history of the Tied House/Air Base Laundry. I’m hopeful that the new council will be responsive to what you and other Livable Mountain View members are bringing to light! It’s great to have a group of educated individuals looking out for the quality of life issues in our city, like Historic Preservation. Keep up the excellent work!
Bravo Mary! I don’t know this group you are a part of, but I so appreciate the work you all are doing to preserve what is left of Mountain View’s rich history. I don’t understand why some of our Council are not proud to have supported these two buildings to be added to the National Register. Don’t they care about civic pride?
Our past Council members, land owners and developers have been destroying Mountain View’s historic buildings for years. My family loves walking past these buildings and while we can’t afford Chez TJ, we do visit Tied House.
The owners of these buildings must have known when they were purchased what they were buying. Chez TJ has promoted having a lovely dinner in one of Mountain View’s oldest buildings for years. How can they now say it is not historic. When Tied House bought the building they didn’t remodel the outside architecture. I assume they appreciated its historic beauty. Right? Why then do they want to destroy it? Council, if you read these comments please save these buildings.
I sincerely hope the buildings are placed on the National Register. Thank you and your organization for caring about our city for all of us.
The ultimate question is whether as a community we value our history enough to preserve it by saving historic buildings for future generations. OR are we (and our City Council)so dazzled by the privilege of allowing the wealthy few to become even more wealthy by destroying our historic structures and building monuments to corporations that will be forgotten in one or two generations. Silicon Valley is littered with forgettable buildings that were once occupied by companies whose time came and went in a few years. Netscape anyone? My Space? Sun Microsystems? How many people can name even a few of the multiple sites once occupied by HP? We are exceedingly fortunate to even have beautiful buildings such as Weilhimer House and Air Base Laundry (Chez TJ/Tied House) which are integral to our city’s history and the development of Silicon Valley …check out LivableMV.org to read about them.
Are these buildings owned by the restaurants or by some landlord? Are the property owners involved in the application for historic status? If think it is pretty lame for a third party to try to push this on a long-time property owner that does not want it.
It’s a bunch of Old Mountain View NIMBYs, not the owners, who are trying to “preserve” it.
@Mark Noack (Author of the article)
Looks like there are two different discussion threads on this item. People might be confused by not seeing the whole context of discussion. Could you ask you web master to merge the two articles and discussion threads? Thanks!
@ Ralph
Hey Ralph, go back and check out the other thread on this article. Somehow this discussion got disconnected from the main thread. You’ll learn about the history of the Tied and Weilheimer Houses, why they need to be preserved, and what Mary Hodder and the other Livable Mountain View people are doing to save our last few historic buildings here in our city. It could change your perspective! I’m sure glad I saw what they posted there.
I read that, Inciter, and I stand by my description. Livable Mountain View is a bunch of Old Mountain View NIMBYs. A laundry building isn’t really “history”.
Tied House is a former dry cleaning facility with issues. It has a Quonset Hut roof and a plain plaster facade. California is littered with similar cheap construction. The former Sports Page on the El Camino or any old Marine barracks are also fine examples of this type of significance? that is torn down daily. So any building in Mountain View with a stucco/plaster facade and cheap rolled roof can now be considered significant and delay any project. Really? The owners want to concentrate on their beer wholesale business. Their restaurant is a deterrent to their desire to run their wholesale business full time.
George, (Chez TJ), has stated he would like to be part of the new project and develop “Chez TJ 2.0” on the ground floor. Yet the OMVers/Nimby’s believe a nicely maintained facade re-purposed into a restaurant with 0 bedrooms and a commercial kitchen and bathroom should be preserved as a culturally significant piece of history? That’s perverse and this stalling tactic is politically motivated. It’s no longer a home that any sensible person could acquire and remodel without tax incentives. Who wants to live between a Facebook building and the police station. It’s not significant anymore. It’s another restaurant/owner next to the Tied House that would like to be reinvent another restaurant.
A multi use development with a restaurant, the caliber of a Chez TJ, with George at the helm would be amazing.
I gasp when when I see “property owners should be able to sell their property within reason. Maybe the owners will be forced to go before a city appointed board of busybodies to plead for their ability to sell their property.
The same people that want to preserve this history are the same people that want to have the city gift them ~free street parking permits up to 4 permits per household. One needs to understand their motivation. “No growth is their motivation and please don’t park in front of my house”.
I’m guessing that is why the thread was split. Get to know the whole story.
Mary, that doesn’t really provide any more useful information. Insisting that some old dry cleaner building is “an architectural marvel” is a real stretch, but you Old Mountain View NIMBYs are pretty shameless.
Apparently a bunch of the people commenting are either new to the Voice “Town Square” pages, or just unobservant nitwits.
It’s a longstanding, almost venerable quirk of this website to regularly generate a second copy of a story first posted electronically before it’s in print.
Regular readers (but not the first few commenters above) know this, they seek out the original thread and keep the discussion there for clarity. Or, they wait for the Voice staff to get around to consolidating the two articles and their comment threads. Blathering on cluelessly in a secondary version of an existing story and thread only distracts and confuses more readers.
Gosh, @Reader, I hope you didn’t call Mary a nitwit. That’s funny, but wrong.
Randy: Half the people fighting to keep these Historic Properties don’t live in OMV.
On the one hand, I have an anonymous poster saying that they don’t live in Old Mountain View. On the other hand, we have the list of people in Livable Mountain View from their website…
notanitwit: No, I meant the earlier comments, before hers. Currently, the first five.
But, Mtviewresident, the millionaire NIMBYs in Old Mountain View really like that old dry cleaner building. Are you trying to say that isn’t historical significance?
The Tied House is a toxic site identified by the California Department of Toxic Substances Control. It used to be a “dry” cleaner. I suggest that the proponents of making it a historic site consider how that might prevent cleanup of the carcinogenic volatile organic compounds in the soil gas and groundwater.
Reply to ” LOL”:
I guess you are doing it for the Lulz because you are mischaracterizing Livable Mountain View.
The best affordable housing is the housing we have now. Rock Street is a great example.. and new housing without some new rules won’t get those spaces and prices back for the old residents. I would love to see more new dense housing go in, in places that don’t displace residents with affordable housing now, like Rock Street. We have lots of empty parking lots or other empty, little used spaces around MV. Why don’t we target those spaces for the new affordable housing and keep the old?
Part of the problem is that the land owners, like those at Rock Street, want to cash in. And they have a right to, to a degree. But I would personally love the city to step in and require an equal amount of new housing at the site dedicated for the old residents, priced at the old pricing, added together with other the new housing. Then the owner / developer can have the additional housing to maximize the site, if they want to do a new project. But without that replacement, making the old tenants whole, it’s difficult because we lose the culture and livability Mountain View had before the Google tidal wave.
Tied House is a former dry cleaning facility. It has a Quonset Hut roof with a cheap facade. California is littered with similar construction. So any building in Mountain View with a stucco/plaster facade and cheap rolled roof can now be considered significant and delay any project. Really? The owners want to concentrate on their beer wholesale business. Their restaurant is a deterrent to their desire to run their wholesale business full time.
George, (Chez TJ), has stated he would like to be part of the new project and develop “Chez TJ 2.0” on the ground floor. Yet the OMVers believe a nicely maintained facade with 0 bedrooms and a commercial kitchen should be preserved as a culturally significant home? That’s perverse and politically motivated. It not a home. It’s not significant. It’s another restaurant/owner that would like to be reinvent another restaurant.
The Nimby’s come out swinging and play the historic card, that’s pretty sad. Next they will want personal parking permits in OMV because they don’t want to park in their driveways yet still walk downtown….and visitors who want to park will endlessly circle the looking for city owned street parking crowded with homeowner cars and RV’s. I actually agree with Lenny on this one-go figure.
I like the Tied House facade and building. Whether we like it or not is personal to each of us. But it appears the majority of MV residents like it and want to keep it. I attended the Nov 27, 2017 Council meeting where the room was packed with people who like the buildings and want to keep them. The few changes I can see when I visit the establishments that accommodate the food businesses inside are easily reversed and restored, as the outsides and insides are pretty close to original.
To 3rdMAW’s comment on parking:
People who live near the train station and don’t have off street parking cannot complete with the office workers at tech companies who fill up the residential streets every day, and leave their cars around in evenings / weekends, heading back to SF on the train. Other groups have documented this over the years. Mountain View downtown is becoming everyone else’s free parking lot. Why would we begrudge residents from having priority on their own streets over outsiders who don’t add much to the community? Office workers need to take transit and without a parking program, as is now the situation, they have no incentive not to drive. So it’s a win for the environment (transit use) and for residents, if we make it so those living down at the train area (or care givers and maintenance workers helping those people) where parking is so full can park near their homes.
MV does not owe anyone almost free permit street parking just because they live or desire to live near downtown. The city council thought and still thinks the RPP program was ill conceived and ended miserably, thankfully. Holy cow, OMV wants livability, walk ability yet builds shuttle blockades (cleverly called “calming devices) loves RV’s and Lenny but wants the city to give them unfettered access to street parking?
Choosing to live near downtown comes with a price that Nimby’s/Boomers are unwilling to pay. There is only a handful of homes in OMV without a driveway or garage, that could easily be accommodated with a specially vetted permit, same for a care giver. I always find it humorous to those that want to live near downtown, yet clog the streets with their personal vehicles, too lazy to shuttle cars or have converted their garage into a living /storage space, while telling everyone else they should take public transportation or ride a bike to get near downtown.
Pretty simple, petition the city for 2 hour parking restrictions, park within your own footprint and its a win for residents, visitors and service providers.
From the other MV Voice article posted 1d ahead of this article here: https://www.mv-voice.com/print/story/2019/01/25/historic-status-sought-for-tied-house-chez-tj
This comment was left:
>>Posted by Lenny Siegel
>>a resident of Old Mountain View
>>on Jan 25, 2019 at 12:07 pm
>>Lenny Siegel is a registered user.
>>The Tied House is a toxic site identified by the California Department of Toxic Substances Control. It used to be a >>”dry” cleaner. I suggest that the proponents of making it a historic site consider how that might prevent cleanup of >>the carcinogenic volatile organic compounds in the soil gas and groundwater.
I wanted people to see the toxic info that I collected and so here is my response on the other thread:
Posted by Mary Hodder
a resident of Old Mountain View
on Jan 25, 2019 at 1:24 pm
A few clarifications about Lenny’s comment:
I spoke about a half dozen times over a year long period with the State of CA toxins project manager overseeing reporting and monitoring on the Tied House / Airbase Laundry toxic site.
In multiple conversations with the project manager, she confirmed for me that Tied House and the toxin situation is stable. If nothing happened (ie no construction, removing building and pulling out soils and putting in underground garage), the state would continue to monitor site and just require the ventilation system in there now, as that is considered safe.
A bit of background on the site: First, Tied House as the “Airbase Laundry” from the 1930-late 50s was a French Laundry, which doesn’t use chemicals. Next door, Fremont cleaners (now a video editing shop) was a chemical based dry cleaners. Tied House owns the alley way between the two building, but Fremont cleaners had a roll up door at the alley way.
The PM told me the Fremont Cleaner site likely used the TCE chemical that now exists below ground at both Fremont and Tied/Airbase. And Fremont is suspected of having dumped massive amounts of TCEs at their alley way door (the concentrations in testing reports there appear to support this) as well as in the back of their shop. These chemicals migrated around, some north to underneath the Franklin St housing and some east to the Tied House. Chez TJ doesn’t appear to have had much testing and the TCEs don’t show up on reports much, that far from the Fremont/Video shop. The toxins also likely go all the way down to the water table, which is this area starts around 100′.
Right now, Tied House has to run a ventilation system to pull up and blow out TCE fumes to keep the air clean and acceptable for a restaurant and employee use of the building. It not be acceptable for housing.
If Tied were knocked down, and the Minkoff or similar project were to go in, removing 20′ of dirt would still leave all the rest of the toxins at the site. So then, the garage and new offices or whatever would have to put in a massive shied below the concrete underground garage, but the toxins would still leak through requiring the *exact same ventilation system*.
So no different than Tied House now. So developers who say they are going to cleanup, yes.. could clean 10′ down, or 20′ down. But they wouldn’t excavate away the problem. And Fremont / Video shop, which Minkoff considered and actually did toxic testing and reporting with the state, decided not to use that side because it’s a total mess. Lots and lots of TCEs and they didn’t want to get into even more chemicals than the ones that leached over to Tied / Airbase.
So not redeveloping, or redeveloping changes nothing, other than 10 or 20 feet of dirt that might be removed. But the toxins stay, and continue to require ventilation. So no big value to Mountain View to have a developer pull up that small amount of contaminated dirt, because there’s still another 80-200′ of dirt directly below with TCEs. Nice to have the 20′ gone. But not much change.
And if the loss is the amazing ONE of A KIND building: the Hamburg warehouse style, remixed with California Spanish materials, in one of the very first “tilt up” wall experiments that is an architectural marvel, it’s not a great trade off.
I can’t believe Mary’s position on the contamination at the Tied House. I go all over the country helping communities address similar contamination. It is the policy of EPA and virtually every state environmental regulatory agency that mitigation – what Mary calls ventilation – is not a long-term solution to exposures to volatile chlorinated hydrocarbons.
Furthermore, as one can learn by reading up about contamination sites all over Mountain View, excavation is rarely the only form of remediation used.
This is wrong on so many levels!
Here’s a solution!!! Demolish Kaiser Permanente and move both buildings to that location. Allow the property owners to do what they want.