El Amigo’s Building And 14 SRO Units In Contract To Be Sold
August 10, 2015
The three-story building on the southeast corner of Mission and Virginia, which is currently home to the El Amigo Bar and Restaurant with 14 residential hotel rooms (a.k.a. SRO units) and a penthouse office above, and was the original home of Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack, is in contract to be sold.
While the sale includes El Amigo’s liquor license, the bar is owned by the son of the current building owner and its fate and official terms of its lease were not publicly disclosed.
The buyer’s intentions with respect to the 14 occupied SRO units, which currently rent for between $500 and $1,000 per month, remain unknown as well. We’ll keep you posted and plugged-in.
Comments from Plugged-In Readers
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how much were the owners asking, how long was it on the market?
And how many of the units are occupied?
Wonder if you can turn those SRO’s into “Tech SRO’s”? You’d probably need to empty the building, and good luck with that. Otherwise, fixing up any vacant rooms and renting them to techies (living cheek by jowl with a lesser population) is probably an ephemeral pursuit; meaning that your ability to rent to professionals at high rates will dissipate as more rentals come online and tech hiring slows down. These rooms would be considered pretty low on the totem pole of desirability, and the first housing where people bolt for better accommodations. And then you’re back to renting out true SRO’s to, ahem, a less well off client base. No thanks, I’ll pass on that.
Do they have to be kept as SROs in perpetuity? The City evolves all the time. It would make better sense to turn them into one and two bedrooms for couples or starter families. The demand would be higher than TechROs.
anything other than flop houses
I believe current law requires preservation of the same number of residential units, which would be hard to do converting them even to studios with kitchens/baths. Maybe if they build out the penthouse floor to include another 3 to 4 units, it might be possible, but not one- and two-bedrooms…
would be nice if they tore it down and rebuilt. if it were 8 or 9 floors with SROs on bottom 3 floors to keep the 15 and put market rate on top 6 floors
tore it down and rebuilt? That’s a cool old Victorian building. .
its pretty hideous and we need more housing. perfect area for a newer 8 flr building
no, it is not hideous. your ideas are pie in the sky, your vocabulary is weak, and your aesthetic sense is poor
it must feel good to anonymously come onto a blog and insult people. it almost makes you feel like a man i bet. some people call “pie in the sky” another word, “vision” too many people like you are stuck thinking within your small little world within your small little concepts
no insults were made, merely frank assessments of your dubious word choices.
Uh, what — 8 or 9 floors? This is a residential neighborhood, across from the Bernal Safeway. Max height there is 3 stories.
“Do they have to be kept as SROs in perpetuity?” You ask…
Of course, welcome to San Francisco! SRO’s are considered affordable housing. It’s a Herculean task to get them reazoned or changed. That’s why I mentioned techRO’s, since technically you’re not changing the unit or its use. Only making it swank enoug for young techies to want to rent. The trick is that you gotta get rid of the present population- no fun coding, much less sharing showers with crackheads!
Believe me, if you could change out of SRO use, all those crack hotels on mission between 16-17st would have been sh*t canned a long, long time ago.
Of course, you could always discuss this with the area supervisor. I’m sure Campos would relish at getting rid of SRO’s…..ummm….no.
Campos won’t last forever and this building will certainly outlast him. Changing them into techROs is the path of least resistance until Campos leaves office. Better yet, emptying the building of its current tenants…and leaving the units vacant.
If coders are a valuable commodity, they shouldn’t have to live in cramped quarters due to necessity.
I doubt anyone, other than those politicians who are looking to save their own jobs, cares to keep crack houses.
I agree. It’s desperate measures wrt SF housing.
“…get rid of the present population”… “emptying [of] the current tenants”
You two are disgusting.
Yes you’re right. SRO’s are really great. Love them. How about having one next to your home?
I agree. In theory there’s no change of use required to rehab these buildings and re-Lease them as techRO’s.
Ellis, & leave vacant w/ a sign that say’s ‘Rentals / New Homes, Coming Fall 2020’.
In the meantime, lease/use the commercial space for a purpose that the neighbors above would typically complain about but that’s needed in the neighborhood. Two ‘issues’ solved, w/ income to maintain the building for a few yrs.
Jane Kim can now come up w/ 900k for each affordable unit that was lost.
Like it. Ditch the dive bar, combine space with old Emmys and rent to some trust funder with a “concept” restaurant”. Then 5 years on you collect the big bucks!
the bar hasn’t been a dive bar for quite some time
You cannot Ellis SRO hotels. See AB1217