When Malika Junaid and her partner decided to relocate their architecture firm from Palo Alto to downtown Mountain View, they thought it would be a fairly straightforward process to get the building permits and be back in business.

They expected it to take about three months tops, as they only planned on doing interior renovations to the office. A year later, M. Designs Architects had not yet opened its doors to the public.

“Even our realtor told us not to buy in Mountain View,” Junaid said in July. “Since last year, we’ve not been able to do anything. We’re working remotely right now. We’re meeting our clients at their homes. We’re actually losing business and it’s been very frustrating.”

Junaid has not been the only small business owner bogged down by permit delays in Mountain View.

You You Xue, a restaurant owner, also voiced his frustrations with the city’s permit process at a City Council meeting in January. He said that he was paying $22,000 a month in rent at San Antonio Center but could not move forward with plans to open his restaurant.

“We cannot afford to have months and months of delays over minor issues,” Xue said, noting that the city’s review mainly focused on the color of the restaurant’s outdoor awnings and dining umbrellas.

Mountain View has long positioned itself as a city that supports economic development. There are about 5,600 active businesses in the city, according to the most recent annual budget report. Several tech behemoths, like Google, Intuit and LinkedIn are headquartered in Mountain View as well as prominent startups like Waymo and Nuro.

But for many small businesses looking to establish a storefront, it has not been easy gaining a foothold in Mountain View. The permit process is cumbersome and time consuming, they say, pushing many to the brink of giving up altogether.

“I think if I was just running this small business on my own without my husband’s backing, either we would have folded and we would have lost everything, or we would have had to sell this place and move on,” Junaid said.

The city’s response

Every year, Mountain View processes between 3,500 and 6,500 building permits of all types. About 20% to 25% of these are for commercial developments, according to Mountain View Community Development Director Christian Murdock.

For a city of its size, this is a large number of permits to process, and occasionally problems come up, Murdock said.

Part of the issue is that before any project begins, there are a big range of “unknowns,” he said. Each building is unique and entails a different set of considerations based on its location, age and construction type, among other things.

The permit process helps manage these unknowns, ensuring that buildings comply with safety, zoning and code requirements, many of which are mandated by the county and state. But it’s often the last thing people tend to think about when starting a business, Murdock said.

As a result, people are taken aback when the process does not go as smoothly as they anticipated. They might not be able to build what they want or required improvements might take longer than expected, Murdock said.

But these cases are more the exception than the rule, according to Murdock.

“If you put the number of issues that people have had or problem cases in context, it’s a very small number, which I think reflects the care and attention that the city’s process has to try to get people through the process with clear instructions (and) clear and timely reviews,” he said.

Applying for approval, more than a dozen times

To open a brick-and-mortar business in Mountain View involves a lot of steps, even for seemingly simple projects that don’t require major construction or a change in the building’s use.

Junaid did not anticipate that an office remodel would take so long, in part because the renovations were not extensive, but also because the building was being used for the same purpose. The previous occupants were architects too.

It took about three months to receive a provisional use permit and about six months for a building permit. But the permits were for only one part of the property, as the building spans two sites, 382-384 Castro St.

Junaid and her partner applied for another provisional use and building permit after the first set was approved. They also applied for a demolition permit, an excavation permit and lot line adjustments.

According to state law, cities must respond to every permit application submission within 30 days. Still, this can add up to monthslong delays if applications need to be resubmitted because they are incomplete or comments need to be addressed. The 30-day period is triggered with every resubmission.

The way the process is set up makes it difficult to get permits, Junaid said, even though city staff are trying to help them, she added. A timeline provided by Junaid shows that she and her partner have submitted permit applications more than a dozen times for approval. In August, they partially moved into their office but still are not done with the permitting for the other side of the building.