{"id":62622,"date":"2025-11-20T21:16:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T21:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/62622\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T21:16:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T21:16:09","slug":"after-historic-ordinance-sunk-japantown-businesses-san-jose-city-officials-eye-reforms-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/62622\/","title":{"rendered":"After historic ordinance sunk Japantown businesses, San Jose city officials eye reforms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even before burdensome and complex regulations plunged a prominent Japantown business owner and his family into near financial ruin<\/a>, the unintended consequences from San Jose\u2019s historic preservation rules had already bubbled to the surface.<\/p>\n

While Japantown has a large number of buildings steeped in historical significance, it\u2019s also become representative\u00a0of\u00a0the ambiguous, lengthy and costly bureaucracy involving these structures.\u00a0 It\u2019s a cumbersome system, business owners say, that creates the opposite of the desired effect: neglect or abandonment instead of investment and preservation.<\/p>\n

Japantown Business Association President Tamiko Rast, along with her family, has spent decades navigating the complex regulations and has experienced the frustrations firsthand. Along a two-block stretch, Rast noted nine condemned buildings. She even helped board some of them up, chased away arsonists, and was assaulted by trespassers coming out of the buildings.\u00a0Their state of disrepair was not because property owners did not want to fix them, she asserts, but because the city has made it nearly impossible to do so.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese city and county processes are so overwrought, so complicated, so far removed from the middle- and working-class people in Japantown that you either bankrupt yourself trying to keep up with regulation or you have to sell everything you have just to fight it,\u201d Rast said.<\/p>\n

But after years of complaints, a group of elected officials is proposing that the city reevaluate historic designations and their related processes to make them more straightforward, faster and cost-effective.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve heard a lot from residents and business owners in Japantown in particular recently around some of the business closures and some of the ways that the current historic preservation ordinance may be adding more friction to the process than may be necessary,\u201d District 3 Councilmember Anthony Tordillos told The Mercury News before presenting the proposal at Wednesday\u2019s Rules Committee meeting. \u201cI think a particular problem that we\u2019ve seen in Japantown is just some of these older properties get passed down to newer or younger generations. (We need to make) sure that they can afford to continue to invest in and keep them up to date. But it\u2019s a problem that extends far beyond the reaches of Japantown, as I\u2019ve heard even in my own neighborhood and in other parts of District 3 about some of the barriers to maintaining some of these historic properties.\u201d<\/p>\n

The need to reevaluate the regulations involving historic buildings took on new meaning recently, after Jordan Trigg and his family were forced to close some of their Japantown businesses. They previously told The Mercury News they were unaware that some of the properties they purchased were on the historic resources inventory, which made permitting and remodeling significantly more costly and complicated<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There is no legal requirement in real estate disclosures to note when properties are historic, so Rast said many people in Japantown, including legacy families, are unaware of the more cumbersome regulations.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople often find out when they pull permits for their buildings and most of the time, because of the fact that Japanese-Americans were interned and had less inclination to deal with any government entity post-World War II, there\u2019s a lot of unpermitted building here,\u201d Rast said. \u201cThey find out that not only do they have to meet historic regulations, but they have to correct the former owners\u2019 unpermitted building on top of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rast also added that there is no handbook or strict framework to follow, which she thinks gives the planning department too much leeway to dictate what property owners can and cannot do.<\/p>\n

The proposal \u2014 submitted by Tordillos and co-signed by Mayor Matt Mahan, Vice Mayor Pam Foley, and District 4 and District 6 Councilmembers David Cohen and Michael Mulcahy \u2014 aims to improve outreach while taking a multi-pronged approach to reforming aspects of the existing policy that business and homeowners maintain have held back\u00a0progress.<\/p>\n

Part of the policy reforms includes exploring the creation of an amnesty program for unpermitted structures on the historic inventory that do not cause health or safety hazards. They also include creating a framework for demolishing or removing structures from the historic inventory when they are in substandard condition or when the historic features are no longer evident.<\/p>\n

\"AA building at 642 N. Fourth St. in San Jose seen on Nov. 19, 2025, is boarded up. Some residents and business owners say San Jose\u2019s historic preservation ordinance has made rehabilitation too difficult because of a lack of clarity and how costly and time-consuming it can be. (Devan Patel\/Bay Area News Group)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tordillos said the proposal also seeks to modernize some of the requirements for features, such as windows, to align with the city\u2019s climate and safety goals.<\/p>\n

Mahan said that the city was committed to striking a responsible balance between investment in jobs and housing and protecting and leveraging historic assets, calling the situation \u201cnot an either-or.\u201d<\/p>\n

The city needs to make the process\u00a0significantly easier because if not, \u201cyou just get worse outcomes,\u201d regardless of where the project is in the city, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hear over and over again from people in the community who own and want to invest in historic properties that the process is too slow, too expensive and often not clear enough,\u201d Mahan said. \u201cIt has become in some parts of town, particularly around downtown and Japantown, a major impediment to the very investment we desperately want to see, the investments people want to make in refurbishing old spaces or, when appropriate, redeveloping underutilized, abandoned or vacant buildings and lots into uses that are vibrant and community-serving.\u201d<\/p>\n

The proposal is currently undergoing a workload analysis by the city to determine whether it is manageable and what resources will be required to implement it. Tordillos said he hoped to bring back more options and analysis by March to shape the final ordinance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re certainly trying to move quickly here because we understand that this has been a problem that has existed for many years,\u201d Tordillos said. \u201cThe longer that it goes on, the bigger the scale of the problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the problem has long been a sore spot, Rast credited Tordillos and Mahan for pushing the reforms forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has completely hamstrung our development and it\u2019s demoralizing,\u201d Rast said. \u201cWhy would you invest in this community when you cannot even take care of the buildings next door. It doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even before burdensome and complex regulations plunged a prominent Japantown business owner and his family into near financial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[184,387,7,1335,181,100,88,90,89,198,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-62622","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-bay-area","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-development","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-san-jose","15":"tag-san-jose-headlines","16":"tag-san-jose-news","17":"tag-santa-clara-county","18":"tag-south-bay"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}