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On Nov. 7, representatives of the city of Hollister, including interim City Manager Jim Pia, met with a small group representing business and construction interests who wished to air their complaints about project delays.
Tracy and Mike Nino, of Nino Homes and Development, initiated the meeting, primarily to discuss issues with the renovation of two buildings they own in Hollister. Pia, Councilmember Dolores Morales, and Assistant City Manager Rod Powell, along with a half-dozen interested parties, were also present.
“It is so frustrating to come to an impasse in a project,” Mike Nino said. “So, why not meet and say, ‘Listen, I got a problem with one, two and three?’”
Others at the meeting also used the time to discuss similar problems they were having with their projects in the city.
In an interview with BenitoLink about the meeting, Pia said he could “sense the frustration in the room,” and he felt that the city needed to address problems going forward and take them seriously.
“I would not for an instant say that some of what they’re going through does not exist,” he said. “There are absolutely some difficulties that Hollister needs to work through with our development community.”
The immediate issue was work being done on structures owned by the Ninos at 1699-1725 Airline Highway, which house an assortment of businesses, including the Goodwill Store, O’Reilly’s Auto Parts, Catch-25, Diaz Liquors, El Grullense, and the newly opened Cita’s Cafe.
“We purchased the center around seven years ago,” Nino said. “It was one of the first shopping centers in Hollister, but it was very outdated and just tired. We wanted it nice—we can’t build the Taj Mahal, but we can spruce things up.”
In 2022, the Ninos began consulting with architects from Chicago and Salinas to develop ideas for updating the building’s design without altering the footprint or use.
“We were redoing the whole facade,” Nino said. “The store signs were just a terrible mismatch. It just looked terrible. We wanted something cohesive with the style of the updated facade.”
During the design process, they incorporated the Brass Tap restaurant concept, including an outdoor patio and courtyard, into the original drawings.
The Brass Tap project was announced on its Facebook account in December 2022. A rendering of the new restaurant was posted on Facebook in February 2023. Just under two years from the start of the project, the Brass Tap opened in November 2024.
By September 2024, the Ninos had submitted a set of plans for the remodel to the city, and shortly thereafter, Nino met with city inspectors to clarify the necessary inspections before beginning work.
In February 2025, the Ninos presented the project and the planned master signage program to the Hollister Planning Commission.
“Mike does a lot of presentations,’ Tracy Nino said, “and we wanted to be in charge of our own destiny. So, we did a really beautiful PowerPoint presentation and took it to the Planning Commission to explain the whole project.”
It took another four months, until June 9, for the commission to approve the signage and for construction to start—and for the problem to begin. Instead of being considered a single cohesive project, Nino said the Building Department made each business apply for permits separately.
“Because we designed it,” Mike Nino said, “we handled all that for them. So we had to do around 14 different applications, and it’s been taking forever. We’ll have a two- or three-month turnaround with the Building Department on signs that were already approved by planning.”
Another complication was that they could not submit permit applications while the demolition of the old facade was underway, which further delayed the project. Meanwhile, the businesses were unable to have even temporary signage. The final approvals, according to Nino, are not due until Dec 9, three months after the initial okay from the Planning Commission.
“Now keep in mind,” Nino said, “everything that we’re talking about up till this point has been regarding the signage. It does not include the actual building permit for the facade update.”
While the project was underway, four new businesses moved into the center. According to Nino, the city’s Building Department insisted that they file permits as tenant Improvements, with professional drawings for all four, despite what Nino said were no fundamental changes in usage.
On July 9, the Building Department required the Ninos to submit revised plans with more detailed electrical information and told them they would hear back from the city in one month. Instead, after three months of waiting, they were informed they would have to submit another full set of plans.
“The electrical runs through those new facade walls,” Nino said. “And they aren’t finished on the back. The wood’s just out there drying or getting rained on, and we can’t put on braces for the wind because we can’t finish the walls.”
On Sept. 10, the master signage program applications were submitted, broken out by individual businesses. The Ninos have been informed that they are finished, but they will not be able to pick them up until Dec. 6.
“It’s just endless,” Nino said. “It’s not reasonable. There needs to be a desire to expedite things. I’m not saying, let me off the hook. But it’s important to be helpful and timely.”
That lack of timeliness, he said, can be seen in how long it takes to get responses from the city.
“Every time you call,” Nino said, “you have to wait two to three weeks for an appointment. It’s by appointment only. So, every single change that they give you is a two- to three-week wait to come back in. Otherwise, we could turn things around the same day.”
Delays in opening businesses may have become most apparent to residents with the issues surrounding the Panera and Wendy’s locations in the Hollister Farms shopping center on East Park Street, which were approved by the Planning Commission in August 2023, after being announced in March 2018.
Panera, which has built more than 2,200 locations in the U.S., did not open until almost two years later, in June of this year, after sporadic construction work and periods of inactivity on the site.
A public records request from BenitoLink to the city returned almost 2.5 gigabytes of plans and inspection reports, along with correspondence between the franchise owners and their agents with Hollister.
BenitoLink has been investigating these delays and issues since March, interviewing several contractors and business owners. The Ninos and Real Estate Agent Jason Noble are the first to go on record with their concerns, and they echo what others have said, claiming there is an adversarial culture with the city, a lack of helpfulness and an undermining of the relationship between owners and the city.
Those unwilling to go on the record offer several reasons for not wanting their names in print: they have ongoing or completed projects but do not want to risk retaliatory inspections or, as one source said, “I don’t want my name used because I still have to work in this town.”
But their complaints parallel the experiences of the Ninos and expand on them. Several contractors complained that the city constantly moved the goalposts, having completed approved work only to be told it needed to be redone to meet new specifications.
“They come and do the inspections and give you comments,” one contractor said, “Then they come back after you address them and they add more. They constantly do that. It’s just never ending.”
Another contractor complained that the city took an onerous amount of time to approve even minor modifications, including a project he had worked on that required only the installation of new plumbing fixtures in an existing building.
“One client had to wait for almost four months for a simple tenant improvement,” he said. “I’ve gotten a permit for a whole house in less than four months.”
There were also complaints about excessive fees, including charging more than $3,000 for permits to install air conditioning and a furnace.
“I do work in Los Gatos, Pacific Grove, San Jose and Santa Clara,” another contractor said. “Those permits are usually 450 to 500 bucks. I don’t know how they’re getting away with it. How is that even legal?”
Another contractor said that he had an investor looking to develop an existing property but ended up looking outside the city for a place to open his business.
“He got wind of the Building Department,” he said, “and he backed out. He’s done. I recently had two other clients back out of their projects because it had taken too long. It’s affecting my livelihood.”
Nino Real Estate’s Noble, who attended the Nov. 7 meeting, said that one side effect of these delays is that applicants ultimately become frustrated with the process and proceed with work even without the permits.
“People are willing to roll the dice and do without,” he said. “When a small business person has a hope and a dream of doing something, and it takes month after month to find out if they can do it or not, financially, they’re beaten down.”
City Manager Pia said that the city has little choice but to enforce its regulations strictly, regardless of the issues or expenses it may cause.
“The function of building permits and processing and planning,” he said, “is very regimented for all the right reasons, and their actions often lead people to frustration. And the people just don’t like it.”
Pia said that sometimes certain changes are demanded following on-site inspections, which can be attributed not to overvigilance but to errors on the part of the applicant, and that it is the city’s responsibility to review matters efficiently.
“I don’t want to minimize that sometimes the problems can be on the other side of the aisle,” he said. “The applicant, planner or architect could be taking shortcuts or not identifying something, so some of the problems are part of a two-way street.”
As far as bureaucratic delays, Pia said that in every city, every department could always do a better job with customer service and that he is working on some changes to the processes.
“We want to make things better,” he said. “We want to make it easier for the builders, for the homeowners, for the shopkeepers, for the city. At the end of the day, we’ll have a better city and not create a situation where people don’t want to do things here.”
While the Ninos said there has been significant “forward motion” in the weeks following the meeting with the city, Nino attributes it to being “the squeakiest wheel.” He also credits Tracy Nino, who sent a relentless series of emails on various aspects of the project.
Saying he appreciates what seems to be an effort on Pia’s part to assist, he said it helps that his business has resources that smaller builders or individuals working on their homes do not.
“We have the ability to pursue things,” Nino said, “but a lot of people don’t. So they’re just kind of left at the mercy of whatever crumbs the Building Department will give them.”
As work at Heritage Plaza has begun again, Nino said he was willing to go on the record with BenitoLink in part because the project was making significant progress. However, he said, once the shopping center is finished, they do not intend to pursue another project in Hollister.
“We thought, ‘things are going our direction, let’s forget about it,’’’ he said. “But it is a citywide problem and it does need to be addressed. And it’s less damaging to us than it is to a small builder. We can deal with it. They can’t.”
Note: In an email to BenitoLink dated Nov. 26, Tracy Nino wrote that her company received the amended set of plans from the city on Nov. 21 (after waiting over 4 months), with 10 permits still pending.
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