"When I hear construction noise inside an abandoned Japanese retailer that only existed because a hotel was moved 186 feet down the street so that a newer hotel could expand in its place, an expansion that later also failed and was then saved by a university to house students, I can only be in San Jose. The southwest corner of"
"Muji originally opened in 2013, to major fanfare. It seemed like every developer and real estate broker in San Jose was there. Multiple news cameras arrived for the occasion. After many years of downtown retail failure, San Jose had become the only city on earth where the opening of one store constituted a major news story. So that's what happened."
An abandoned Muji store at the southwest corner of First Street and Paseo de San Antonio in San Jose has sat vacant since the chain closed after the pandemic. The space previously hosted Cinequest's VIP Lounge during 2011 and 2012 and housed other tenants such as Pic-a-Dilly Fine Food at different times. The building resulted from an early-2000s Fairmont annex project driven by owner Lew Wolff, which required relocating the defunct Hotel Montgomery. The city moved the Montgomery 186 feet to accommodate the annex. The planned hotel expansion later failed and was repurposed by a university to house students.
Read at Metro Silicon Valley | Silicon Valley's Leading Weekly
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