A Bay Area family that has called the South Bay home for years is in danger of losing their house and multiple businesses in Japantown — in large part because of San Jose’s red tape over historic buildings.

Jordan and Rina Trigg own several businesses in Japantown. They just had to close J-Town Pizza, and now the futures of their remaining businesses are in limbo.

Jordan has owned Jack’s in Japantown for 20 years — it’s where he met his wife, Rina.

“Our son’s name is Taylor, for Taylor Street. It’s where we met,” Jordan said.

Together, the couple has opened several other businesses in Japantown over the years, including J-Town Pizza, Spread, and 7 Bamboo Karaoke.

Their next hope was to open a restaurant, so they purchased the property next to Jack’s.

“Japantown desperately needs a breakfast spot, badly, and that was our goal,” Jordan said.

But after purchasing the property, they faced city red tape over historic buildings, dragging out the process of opening the breakfast spot.

“We eventually get told that they have a historic resource that wasn’t disclosed — or wasn’t required to be disclosed,” Jordan said.

A couple of years later, they still haven’t been able to open the breakfast spot and are now buried in debt.

“We leveraged our house, leveraged our existing successful businesses, in hopes of making it work. Unfortunately, it caught up to us,” Jordan said.

J-Town Pizza had its last day on Monday. And now their business Spread — a sandwich shop — could be closing after this weekend.

We reached out to District 3 Councilmember Anthony Tordillos, who has been in office for less than a month, about their situation.

“I think we should also be looking at our actual historic preservation ordinances and making sure they’re striking the right balance between historic preservation while also making sure we’re enabling adaptive reuse, trying to get new businesses set up in some of these spaces,” Tordillos said.

Their situation has caught the attention of many after former Councilmember Raul Peralez set up a GoFundMe for Jordan and Rina, hoping to help the couple.

“Anything makes a difference at this point. More than anything, it encourages us. People do care, do like our businesses,” Jordan said.