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Known for its art deco façade and storied history, one of Mountain View’s oldest buildings – the Jurian, located at 194-198 Castro St. – might undergo major renovations if a proposal goes through to add a three-story extension to the back of the building.
The Jurian has seen a rotating roster of tenants since it first opened its doors more than a hundred years ago. It has housed a pharmacy, upholstery store, jujitsu school, janitorial supply store, candy shop and, most recently, Agave Mexican Bistro. Now it might include a lot more offices.
The two-story, 7,608-square-foot building will nearly double in size with the proposed renovations, which will add a three-story, 6,086-square-foot extension and a roof deck to the back of the building, according to a recent development update submitted by Hanson America LLC.
The construction also will replace an existing outdoor patio with ground floor retail space, while the upper levels will be used as administrative offices, Mountain View Community Development Director Aarti Shrivastava said.
The building extension is meant to be as unobtrusive as possible. “The main idea is they want to put an office addition on the back of the building, which would front on Villa Street but wouldn’t be that visible to Castro Street,” said Robert Cox, a longtime Mountain View resident and member of Livable Mountain View who is also on the steering committee of the Old Mountain View Neighborhood Association. Cox said he attended a public meeting where the project’s historic architect, John Frolli, presented the design plans to members of both groups on July 31.
The developer declined an interview with the Mountain View Voice until the plans are reviewed by the city. But Frolli emailed a statement. “We are very excited about the possibility of restoring the Jurian building and adding to the eclectic fabric of the downtown in a beneficial way to everyone,” he said.
Preserving the historical integrity of the building – which the city is considering nominating to the National Register of Historic Resources, along with seven other commercial buildings on Castro Street – is just one of the public’s concerns about the proposed modifications.
The developer plans to use the provisions of AB 2097, a state law that says developers do not need to build parking on sites within half-mile of public transit. The limited stock of public parking downtown, combined with the prospect of “dead spaces” – where office buildings break up the flow of pedestrian engagement – has some retail owners worried, Cox said.
“People are concerned about the vitality of the downtown. The businesses downtown are already challenged, and two-thirds of them are not bringing in equal or greater revenue to what they were before COVID,” Cox said. “And now we’re making it hard for people to park.”
Aware of these issues, the city is looking into putting a cap on office development downtown, Shrivastava said. “The council wants to look at a good balance of office and housing in the downtown. They have some concerns about parking, offices and the way ground floor is treated in some of these buildings,” she said.
“There are some changes coming ahead for the downtown, and we’re going to be working on it later this year,” she added, referring to the second phase of the downtown precise plan update.
With the changes planned to the Jurian building, what will happen to the current tenent Agave Mexican Bistro?
Castro is already RUINED by closing down vehicular traffic in from central expressway. Castro is a ghost town. The only stores barely doing OK are all near the train station. The back-half of Castro street is a barren desert of closed bankrupted stores. Go visit Castro on a weekday or weekend, both day and night. It is a ghost town. By closing down vehicle traffic from central expressway, you force a lot of northern MV visitors through narrow residential streets to get in, which people won’t do and instead have been going to Sunnyvale, Los Altos, or Palo Alto downtowns (towns which all opened up their downtown streets again). The MV leadership concerning Castro street traffic/developments has been terrible and they all need to be replaced out. Bring BACK vehicular traffic from central expressway into Castro, and cancel the horrible decision to turn this into a barren cement park !! Either that or don’t whine when the only solution to keep Castro street viable is create a lot of new dense high-rise developments to force in high volumes of people.
Per the article:
“ two-thirds of [Castro businesses] are not bringing in equal or greater revenue to what they were before COVID”
This was entirely predictable and the terrible decision to close down central expressway traffic into Castro needs to be repealed/reversed.
Since when is *office space* the thing anyone needs in Mountain View? If they were planning on building housing, I could maybe see an argument for this, but this feels completely unnecessary and is definitely not worth losing the delightful and iconic patio at Agave. Sounds like their whole motivation is to build something without adding parking, rather than actually serving a need. I hope this plan is rejected as the obvious boondoggle it is.
Closing down streets, adding speed bumps and stop signs everywhere, giving roads a “diet” – this town is getting more like Palo Alto every day. Why can’t we have leaders who care about keeping Mountain View Mountain View? By the way, I know it’s not sexy, but how about fixing some roads once in a while instead of spending all your time thinking up expressions like “give the road a diet”? Some of them are truly awful.
I would appreciate it too if builders were not allowed to just close down sections of Middlefield for their own convenience every day. They have plenty of space to work. They don’t need to shut down the road, but the stupid city just lets them do it. For the convenience of a few builders an entire city of drivers have to suffer. Makes so little sense.
Maybe adding offices downtown will drive customers to local businesses? And maybe if pedestrianizing Castro were the problem, the pedestrianized blocks would be suffering more, not less?