The Prado Group has quietly filed plans to add three floors of residential units atop the existing Sullivan’s Funeral Home building at 2254 Market Street and construct two new buildings, rising up to 50-feet in height along Market Street and 40-feet along 15th Street, on the funeral home’s parking lots next door.
As proposed, the buildings fronting Market Street would be interconnected and include up to 45 dwelling units, with 13,500 square-feet of retail space on the ground floor and a garage for up to 22 cars below.
And while the plan for the retail space has yet to be specified, it’s probably safe to assume Sullivan’s is not long for this world.
OMG, people will have to go to Colma now for funerals!
Do you really mean what you said – that they will retain the existing funeral home building but add three floors to it? I can’t imagine that would make sense. I’m guessing you meant that they’ll build a five story building in the footprint of the existing funeral home?
If the existing building is a historic resource, I find it awfully hard to imagine how adding three stories on top could preserve its historic character, unless the upper stories are set way back so that the building face doesn’t change.
The family will still have Driscoll’s in the Mission, and Duggan’s Serra in Daly City. Still, it will be a poignant loss for the Castro. It’s a place where we said goodbye to many of our friends, and its closing will symbolize another loss of the history and culture of our gay neighborhood.
I miss my friends, too. I try to remember other, fabulous moments. Hugs.
There is another one on the corner of Geary right by Geary Kaiser. The name escapes me right now.
If you’re taking inventory, other ones that come to mind are 17th and Valencia near the police station, Geary and 10th(?), Fulton St in Hayes Valley, Green St for Chinatown people, on Mission St in Outer Mission before Geneva, and 3rd St in the Bayview. I think there’s another in the Mission that I can’t place now, maybe So. Van Ness.
Is that one stop service? Eh, there isn’t much we can do for you medically speaking so your next appointment will be at the corner of Geary Blvd.
I’ll have to get a custom pre-made casket because I plan to take it all with me.
6 feet under……
So are they planning to build apartments ABOVE the existing funeral parlor? Wow, and people who live above restaurants complain about “cooking” odors!!
No, that doesn’t work. Look at 9th Avenue between Irving and Lincoln. There was a funeral home and parking lot which was razed for new housing and a La Boulange at the retail level.
Geary and Divisadero is the home of Sinai Memorial Jewish Family Chapel. They are not affiliated with the Sullivan Family. Further down Geary in the Avenues is the home to McAvoy O’Hare Funeral Home, also not affiliated with Sullivan’s. Honestly though, no one is really surprised. Great location and where are there available lots for development in that area? None. So it was just a matter of time. Plus remember that semi tractor trailer that lost control last year and crashed into there establishment? It almost burned their whole place to the ground. And when was the last time the City had our very own crematory…why it has been years! What I don’t really understand what is the significance of keeping the existing structure. Not too appealing. Plus who wants to come home to the remnants of an old stuffy funeral parlor?
There are two crematories on 17th between Shotwell and Treat in the Mission.
San Francisco Municipal Code Chapter 5, Section 195: Cremation of Human Remains in City and County Limits Prohibited. “It shall be unlawful for any person, association or corporation, to cremate, or cause to be cremated, the dead body of any human being within the City and County of San Francisco.” Origin of this law is pre-1906. Pick up a book and learn the City’s history. Just because something appears to resemble a smoke stack, doesn’t mean it is a crematory.
You tell ’em Christo! Slap. Slap.
My guess is that the three additional stories would be set back from the street facade. Not sure how much of the original structure they will keep, but I’m glad to see infill in those parking lots.
Hummmm… Glad now that I did not sign a contract to have them handle my cremation and shipment of ashes.
Its been five minutes and already people are wringing their hands over the idea of this building being a “historic resource”
people need to travel the world a little bit more and learn about what is truly historic
The entire building should be demolished and a complete new, modern residential complex built at this location. The existing building has zero architectural merit.
If the owners want to preserve the building, great. Though I don’t think it’s “historic”, I think it will present a better streetscape presence that yet more modernist glass and steel. And the footprint of the existing building may provide for better retail opporunities (i.e., by being deeper) than the tiny, shallow (and often still-empty) retail spaces being put into new condo and apartment buildings.
While it’s true that it would provide better retail, it’s not like new buildings can’t be built to provide the same spaces. The question we should ask is “why aren’t they?”
Can we please drop “quietly” for 2015?
What about “surreptitiously”, “sneakily”, or “under the cloak of night”? /s
That language makes it sound like the developer is doing something they shouldn’t.
I don’t get it. Are people supposed to have a big party and announcement like “HEY GUYS WE JUST FILED SOME PLANS!!!”
“HI GUYS!!! I JUST CLANDESTINELY GOT MARRIED.” LOL. What I really meant to say was I got harried.
My 2015 is shaping up to be even busier than 2014! How can this be? Oh, I included the stuff I want to do just for myself. Carry on, folks and bring your A game comments.
That parking lot used to be super cruisy.
Nothing like cruising for the easily accessible and emotionally vulnerable…until they wake up and gather their wits about them a year later.
Speaking of which, what is the deal with the FDA’s recent acceptance of donated blood from gay men? The kicker being these gay men have to abstain from sex for a year. Is that like an Indian giver? I don’t know many gay men who could or would abstain for a year.
I’ve had blood transfusions before within the past decade. The likelihood of getting HIV/AIDS from a transfusion was minimal — actually receiving the wrong blood type from hospital negligence probably ranked higher. I insisted on triple-checking the bags along with the two RNs present. No idea who the donor was but my late mom and I would used to joke it came from a homeless person (my fear) and I insisted it came from a young strapping firefighter.
So the preservationists will want to save the pkg lot as “historic” too!
I love the comments from the uninformed masses about the historic merits (or lack thereof) of this, or any other building.
The historic value, or lack thereof, of a structure isn’t determined by popular vote in this or any other forum. There are standards developed by the Secretary of the Interior which are generally used to determine historic value, and buildings which may not seem particularly beautiful or historically significant to you or I might actually have great value or significance. Other times buildings which seem beautiful and historic may have been so extensively modified that their historic value has been lost. There are experts to figure that stuff out.
Other times. buildings which may not have significant historical value based solely on their architecture, are deemed significant for cultural reasons, based on things that occurred there.
Anyway, I don’t find any value in silly comments with individual opinions on the merits of a building’s historic value. Those determinations are made by professional historicists, fortunately, and not by people posting uninformed opinions in forums.
The building in question has been surveyed and identified as a potential historic resource and a contributor to a potential historic district in Upper Market. So I imagine it would be difficult to get approval to tear it down. The survey report on the property is available here: http://ec2-50-17-237-182.compute-1.amazonaws.com/docs/DPRForms/3560008.pdf
Doesn’t “potential historic resource” describe about 90% of buildings in the city?
All you need is a big earthquake or some driver careening out of control into the “historical” building and then, so much for its historical value.
And as often seems to happen here, the project filing that Socketsite claims occurred, didn’t. There are preliminary discussions with Planning about the proposed project, but no planning application or plans have been filed. I wish you would be a little more accurate and explicit in your reporting instead of trying to be provocative by giving the impression that this is a project seeking approval. It’s not, yet.
[Editor’s Note: The preliminary application and plans have, in fact, been filed with Planning (hence the entirely accurate “proposed,” versus “seeking approval,” in our report).]