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California Avenue, Palo Alto’s rapidly evolving “second downtown,” is about to pick up an amenity that City Hall has not planned for but will gladly welcome: kittens.
Mini Cat Town, the kitten-adoption nonprofit that earlier this year vacated its popular location at Stanford Shopping Center after its lease expired, is preparing to open its newest location on California Avenue. And unlike its other locations, which tend to be in shopping malls, this one will occupy the historic Fine Arts Theater building at 429 California Ave., which was most recently occupied by the coffee shop (and one-time running gear store) Zombie Runner and which has been vacant for the past five years.
Thoa Bui, who co-founded Mini Cat Town with her sisters Thi and Tram, said the sisters were drawn to the building when they were at the California Avenue farmer’s market and saw the “For Lease” sign.
“It’s such a distinct building because it’s an old theater and it’s historic,” Bui said. “It’s actually beautiful. It has character to it.”
Established in 2019 in San Jose, Mini Cat Town allows visitors to schedule appointments to come in and play with — and potentially adopt — kittens.
The sisters have been looking at various locations in Palo Alto since departing from Stanford Shopping Center in April, including at other Stanford mall locations and on University Avenue. They had some help in their search from their broker, Jon Goldman, and City Council members Pat Burt and George Lu, Boa said.
California Avenue wasn’t really on their radar, she said. But once they saw the property, “everything in our heads just clicked,” she said.
The street they are moving into has seen sweeping changes since the pandemic, with the council designating the stretch between El Camino Real and Birch Avenue as car-free. In recent months, the city has repaved sections of the street and installed bollards and bike lanes near the entrances. It is also now in the midst of a broader effort to reorganize, rebrand and “activate” the new promenade.
The Bui sisters still have some work to do, including installing a fire alarm and putting in a double-door barrier so that kittens won’t be able to run away. Bui said the nonprofit has signed a five-year lease for the building.
The new lease follows a tumultuous five months for Mini Cat Town, which in January found itself at the center of a zoning dispute involving allowed uses in retail zones. After being on the verge of getting shut down by code enforcement officers, the nonprofit won a temporary reprieve from the Department of Planning and Development Services before the city agreed to suspend enforcement and consider changes to its retail laws to allow more flexibility.
It remained at the Stanford mall, the busiest of its five locations, until April, when its lease expired. Bui said that the city has already approved its business registry and that the nonprofit is working with Fire and Building departments to get approvals for moving in.
“We have some work to do before we move in, but we’re aiming for mid-July,” Bui said.
