Speaking of developments in the hotel space, plans for the proposed Hotel SoMa to rise at 690 Fifth Street have been dusted off and the developers are shopping for financing.
As plugged-in people know, the David Baker designed six-story and now 64-room Hotel SoMa would replace the two-story, 23-foot-tall office building and 14 off-street parking spaces on the northwest corner of Townsend and Fifth.
With Caltrain and Muni across the street, the proposed project won’t have a garage or any off-street parking spaces but will offer on-site bicycle rentals as part of its programming.
And yes, the suspended rooftop glass-bottom swimming pool and bar for hotel patrons are still on the boards.
∙ And Then There Was (Mission Bay Block) One [Socketsite]
∙ Hotel SoMa (690 Fifth Street) As Proposed And Planning’s EIR [SocketSite]
Comments from Plugged-In Readers
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Will be a great pied a terre alternative for Peninsula dwellers who want to Caltrain in for the weekend or night.
there are about 8 days a year an outdoor pool makes sense in SF.
neat to look at, but i’d prefer they spent their “innovation capital” on the facade. it looks like the building is trying to hide behind a masquerade mask of a screen. not to psychoanalyze, but perhaps the building realizes just how ugly it is.
wow, a suspended bottom glass swimming pool. That will be something to experience.
I can imagine an old 1970s disaster movie with an earthquake and a pin-up swimmer: close-up to her horrified eyes looking at the crack in the glass becoming longer and longer. Focus on the ground 50 feet lowers. Zing! Splash!
Anyone want to place odds on the pool making it to reality?
I was wondering that as well eddy. Water is heavy and it would be a front page disaster if that slab of glass failed. So there’s going to be significant engineering put into that thing. My guess is that the pool would be fairly shallow, maybe 3 1/2 feet, to keep the weight under control.
I hope the pool gets built as rendered. It would create quite a spectacle.
There was a swimming pool at a residential development in Alicante, Spain, which had a frameless glass wall – needless to say, it doesn’t have a pool anymore, due to water pressure overwhelming the glass. However, there is a house in Vancouver, BA, by Patkau Architects, if I remember correctly, which has a glass bottom above outdoor and living space.