A sign has been erected at the corner of South Main and Harrison streets advertising the sale of the 33 Forest Ave. building unofficially known as the Mayflower Building.

The building is most known for its “California, Here We Come!” mural that faces the Washington Street Bridge. The 1,800-square-foot work of art is the world’s largest I Love Lucy mural, painted by a father-son team of Jamestown natives, Gary Peters Jr. and Gary Peters Sr. It took more than 500 hours and 30 gallons of paint to complete and was publicly unveiled on October 15, 2012 – the 61st anniversary of I Love Lucy’s debut. The artwork shows Lucy, Ricky, Fred, and Ethel zooming across the George Washington Bridge while singing “California, Here We Come” in a classic I Love Lucy episode from 1955.

It is one of four Lucille Ball murals painted by the father-son team.

The building was constructed in 1950 and includes 22,709 feet of space over five stories and .56 acres. The building is assessed for $124,000, with a sale price of $449,000.

A sign advertising the sale 33 Forest Ave., better known as the Mayflower Building, is pictured. While the property is listed as Forest Avenue, most of the building’s frontage is located on Harrison Street, making the lot another piece of Brooklyn Square with its future in flux. P-J photo by John Whittaker

The sale comes at a time of transformation for Brooklyn Square. A longtime Chinese restaurant was to become a new Northwest Bank branch before the project was terminated. Big Lots had long been an anchor tenant in Brooklyn Square before it closed in 2025 and the Tim Hortons restaurant building is currently empty after Tim Hortons built a new building across the street at the site of the former Friendly’s Restaurant. That lot, which includes 21-41 S. Main St., and Harrison St., was sold by the Savarina Corporation to 716 Rapid Rentals LLC for $2,137,500. Using the parcel number, the buildings include the closed Big Lots, closed Tim Hortons, as well as Community Bank and Family Dollar, both of which are currently open.

A neighboring lot to the Mayflower Building lot is also vacant after Rite Aid closed its Brooklyn Square location in 2025. Building the Brooklyn Square Rite Aid was a late 1990s development when Rite Aid wanted to move from its location at Third and Main streets – in the building that now houses the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Museum – as well as a store in the Country Bells plaza into a bigger, more modern space with more parking. Rite Aid built both the Ellicott and Brooklyn Square stores at roughly the same time. The Brooklyn Square site was formerly home to the Brookwood Restaurant at 50 S. Main St. The Brooklyn Square Rite Aid opened in 1998, followed quickly by the CVS and Walgreens stores in the same area of the city.

The Mayflower Building’s availability also comes as the city is potentially eyeing a reconfiguration and overall redevelopment of Brooklyn Square. The city’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative application includes a traffic circulation improvement project that would cost $4.9 million and include changes to North Main and Harrison Street and North Main Street and the Arterial (Washington Street) along with a signalized corridor along North Main Street from Eighth Street to Brooklyn Square. City officials say the project would improve vehicle circulation and pedestrian safety while strengthening the streetscape character into downtown Jamestown.

The Mayflower property is also adjacent to the proposed redevelopment of the Brooklyn Square Town Center, which the DRI plan says includes reimagining Brooklyn Square as a pedestrian-focused mixed-use town center that restores historic circulation patterns that existed prior to changes that took place in the 1970s. That plan includes potentially tearing down the big box store building on the site.