Shuttered Stanford dive bar saved from demolition

The plan for a new development at the site of the Antonio’s Nut House, a shuttered Palo Alto dive bar beloved by generations of Stanford students and alumni, will avoid the partial demolition originally proposed for the site. But a revised plan won’t leave the site entirely intact: The new structure at 321 California Ave. would not include parking spaces, as originally proposed, because of a new California law.

In June 2022, Palo Alto’s Historic Resources Board supported a partial demolition of the 49-year-old dive bar as long as a commemorative marker was placed at the site noting its historical significance as a prototype drive-thru Safeway grocery store in 1938, and later, the beloved Stanford bar. SFGATE confirmed that the building would no longer be destroyed according to city planning records.

While that is still the plan, a new California law, Assembly Bill 2097, went into effect on Jan. 1, 2023, that prohibits “a public agency from imposing any minimum automobile parking requirements” at a development that is within a half mile of a transit station. Hayes Group Architects, the firm designing the new property at 321 California Ave., submitted new plans for the development at the former Nut House spot on Oct. 16 that eliminated most of the parking that was included in their original proposal from 2022, according to Palo Alto Online.

In the revised plan, the firm would extend the dining courtyard of a new restaurant, though a new tenant has yet to be found, the online publication noted.

Phone calls made to Hayes Group Architects were not returned.

Founder Tony Montooth opened Antonio’s Nut House in 1972 and tried out multiple concepts — a hofbrau, a French restaurant and an Italian restaurant known for minestrone soup — but eventually landed on a bar with free peanuts in baskets, after a rugby team came in one fateful night and drank without ordering any food. Mark Zuckerberg used to frequent the bar in the early days of Meta, formerly Facebook, according to The Six Fifty.