After three months on the market listed $6.6 million, the asking price for the 11,000-square-foot Koster Mansion at 930 Grove Street has just been cut by $200K.
Designed by Martens & Coffey and built as a single-family home for wine industrialist John Koster in the late 1800’s, the Alamo Square property has served as a Jewish Community Center as well as housing for the military during WWII.
Having seen better days but with some rather nice original details intact, plans to add a seven-car garage and develop the property as a proper twelve-unit building have been drawn, but so far nobody has (been) bitten.
The property was purchased for $2,350,000 in 2004 and will be delivered vacant at the close of escrow.
would it be possible to convert this into a single family home?
Love the veranda and scale. Shudder to think how much it will cost to develop/renovate.
It was a grand place, and someone who appreciates real SF would restore it and use it as a single house. It will cost a lot of money to do it, and in this case, it may not be possible to move in and do it little by little.
As has been discussed on socketsite many times, the city can not and does not want to stop you from living in your house, as long as you do not ask for the most evil “dwelling unit merger.”
Except that this place was already carved up into 11 apartments at some point. There is an open permit to rennovate the place, it’s torn down to the studs, but you would indeed be merging a lot of units. Even though those units are totally uninhabitable now because the place is torn apart. It’s kind of a mess. Better add some diligence time prior to closing.
I go past this place often. It’s been seemingly abandoned for a long time, so I imagine the cost to acquire + renovate + profit would be higher than a single-family home in this neighborhood could fetch. Seems like the more profitable idea is to knock it down and build a large, multi-unit codo complex.
Whoever buys this will strip-out all of the “rather nice original details”. The interior will look like a science lab by the time they’re done with it.
NO! One can modernize it while keeping the original details and improving on them as well. Turning it into multiple units will be difficult and more expensive. You will get a hodgepodge version with odd rooms and floorplans.
Keeping the original details and modernizing would indeed be ideal, but that’s unlikely to happen. Unfortunately.
The house next door looks like they’ve done just that! Not sure what that bad boy will look like on the inside, but it’s sure to be gorgeous.
This is a beautiful house with nice architectual features. It is such a shame there were no heirs to the original family to keep this going. We need more people with deep pockets, foresight, and an appreciation for restoration.
Very interesting how many commenters feel entitled to tell other people how to spend their money.
Soccermom got in to see this place a couple of months ago. The pictures have shown the best, there is so much more to do. There is some sort of small private worship space in the upper reaches of the house and a positively murky basement as well. Off the upstairs chapel is a black marble and brass bathroom. This being San Francisco and all, some one-time dweller has turned it into the creepiest church space you can imagine.
Some contractor is going to buy his whole crew waterski boats with this job….
UPDATE: Despite the reduction, the listing for 930 Grove has been withdrawn from the MLS without a reported sale.