Plans to level the 40-room Pacific Heights Inn at 1555 Union Street have been in the works for a couple of years. And as proposed, a 100-room hotel designed by Stanton Architecture will rise up to 40 feet in height across the existing motel’s site on the eastern edge of Cow Hollow.
As originally proposed, and required by code, the development was to include a two-level underground garage for 80 cars. But facing push back from neighbors with respect to the extent of excavation required for the aforementioned garage, the project team is seeking a variance to allow the development to move forward with parking for 35 cars in a single-story garage, which would significantly reduce the depth of excavation and shave 3 months of construction from the project’s timeline.
The Planning Commission hearing for the redevelopment of 1555 Union Street is slated for February 9.
Why would the neighbors care about the extent of the excavation? Once the project is complete there’s no difference in appearance between a garage that goes one story down versus one that is five stories deep. Sure, a deeper basement will result in more construction commotion. But that phase is just a blink of the eye in the life cycle of a project like this.
I can understand neighbors being concerned about the number of parking spaces that the project provides though. Too many will induce too much congestion and too few will put more pressure on street parking.
Maybe neighbors are worried their properties will begin to sink and tilt?
Ahhh yes, the MT (Millennium Tower) Effect…..
AH! I am so happy they want to demolish the unique and cute motel and replace it with a Holiday Inn Express from Salinas.
No worries, I have seen plenty of the ‘unique’ old motels around – there may be a couple in Salinas as well.
Just makes the one at Polk & Eddy even more unique and cute . . . and trendy.
How is the existing hotel unique and cute? It’s a bland and uninspired mid-century building, like the many that plague the city.
As compared to the cheap stucco box that they are proposing, this is a Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece.
The existing looks like a cheap stucco box with some cheap wood cladding as well. Awful.
Not defending the stucco box because I agree with you, it’s cheap and as cookie-cutter as it gets. But motels styled in the existing fashion have terrible street presence and are quite uninviting.
Versus the windowless existing one story box?
Indifferent as to the new hotel and agree with the general dismissal of modern design, but…
(for a suburban example that just makes me wince whenever I see it…look at the “downtown” Suisun City hotel. Gawd, it’s awful.
@ Brian: I am not defending the original building at all (see my first post in this thread). Quite the contrary.
You say unique, I see a dump. There’s nothing unique about cookie cutter 60s design.
Wait, so neighbors want more visitors to be taking up the valuable street parking? This is twilight zone of San Francisco.
The neighbors don’t want anything to change and mistakenly think the less change, the better rather than considering that some change might mitigate other change.
The big cross made think it was an urgent care clinic or church.
How do hotels on Lombard make money? They have the cheapest rates in town yet they are in one of the most expensive neighborhoods.. I understand they made sense 30 years ago but they provide negative value to society right now.. Can they be replaced with housing or because the land is zoned for hotel use is it not economically viable to convert them?
This busy approach to the Golden Gate Bridge is not appropriate for silngle family or other small scale housing and niether the current zoning nor the neighborhood activists woul tolerate anything large (tall).
The neighborhoods seems to have been okay with the projects that went up on Lombard in the recent years (mostly replacing corner gas stations). The last time I heard the neighborhood complain about anything was the proposed Pet Food Express. If anything they need to get rid of the Marina Motel that is a hot-bed of crime (check the crime maps); I doubt the neighbors will complain.
I have wondered the same thing. There are some new apartments that seem to have sold. The noise is no more than along the Market Street corridor and that has been developed with many new buildings. Certainly, this is a desirable neighborhood, close to transportation, retail, entertainment and Marina Green. It would be nice if this became an attractive avenue at the entrance to the City
– but that might be too much to hope for.
February 8th is a Wednesday, I believe the Planning Commission meets on Thursday, February 9th…
[Editor’s Note: Good catch, since corrected above.]
They should go deeper for parking and higher for more density.
while the new building may not be cutting edge architecture, it is 100X better than the current motel that is there now
Hoping the palm trees are replaced with other trees