Rather than running JS on the server, one way I found things to be effective is using any server side templating capability to basically "bootstrap" what the JS might typically do on start-up. So the server renders you a page that looks well formed and then the JS hooks into it for client interactions.

The issue that can be runned into here is possibly duplicating efforts on the server and JS side. You can keep them separate enough but it's tough if you're used to creating everything either through the server or through JS on the client.

The last web app I worked on like this is unfortunately not public but performed rather well and wasn't all that difficult to maintain either.