824 Hyde Street Site

With the approved plans for a 6-story, 30-room hotel to rise upon the vacant Lower Nob Hill parcel at 824 Hyde Street having been overturned by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors last week, the owners of the parcel have just put the site back on the market rather than moving forward with earlier plans for a residential development as rendered below.

While plans for the 5-story building with 14 apartments were approved to rise upon the Hyde Street parcel last year, “after assessing the current and future [strength of the] housing market,” the project team changed directions and decided to build a tourist hotel, as we first reported a few months ago.

And while the change in direction was approved by San Francisco’s Planning Commission last month, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors sided with a public appeal of the project and unanimously voted to overturn the required conditional use authorization for a hotel, publicly arguing that the hotel’s approval would set a precedent for developers to avoid rebuilding housing after a residential fire (such as the one which claimed the former 4-story Chatom Apartments building on the site back in 2010).

We’ll keep you posted and plugged-in.

20 thoughts on “Site of Project Blocked by Supes to Be Sold Rather Than Developed”
  1. Now SF will have to wait until another developer comes to build something here. Wasted time, effort, and money to date. Going forward, the BOS needs to revisit this project, go back to the developer, and work out a compromise and solution. Business is never a zero sum game.

  2. The developer will surely include the entitlement coming with the property in the asking price but, given it expires in 18 months or so and given the plateauing prices of new construction condos, it’s likely whomever purchases the site will do so with the intention of sitting on it for a long while before doing anything. Making the entitlement worthless. The seller is going to have to eat those costs.

    Fourteen apartments here, 42 (is it) in the Hub entitled site being put up for sale, 400 or so in the axed 7th Avenue project and about 300 (is it?) in the two Soviet style housing blocks on 6th which have been put on the market rather than being built. There are a number of others too. Bottom line, there could be close to 1000 entitled units which have been put on the market rather than proceeding to groundbreaking and construction. Presumably these would have been built in the next 5 years, so this could have a big impact on SF housing production.

  3. What a waste. No hotel. No apartments. The City needs both types of buildings now! I just don’t get what happened here! What were they thinking?

  4. BOS was right. It would have set a bad precedent for formerly residential units to be converted no matter what the cause of their demise.

    If these developers are so intent upon building a hotel, I’m sure they find a parcel in the neighborhood currently devoted to commercial use upon which to do so.

      1. Do you have proof of arson? If so, you have an ethical obligation to report it to SFPD and the arsonists should be prosecuted accordingly. If not, then you are just making things up, and running the risk of getting a defamation lawsuit filed against you.

        So, either report a crime, or stop posting nonsense.

  5. “While plans for the 5-story building with 14 apartments were approved to rise upon the Hyde Street parcel last year, “after assessing the current and future [strength of the] housing market,” the project team changed directions and decided to build a tourist hotel, as we first reported a few months ago.’

    Developers will never build into a falling market, where price at occupancy time threatens to be less than price at entitlement time.

    1. It’ll be interesting to see how quickly and at what prices these entitled projects sell. Given other markets are in an up-cycle as SF is in a down-cycle, it’s likely any purchasers will do so only at a big discount. The entitled Mt. Sutro single family home development was put on the market more than a year ago. There has been one price reduction IIRC – don’t know if they’ve been able to score a sale with the reduced price.

    1. This assertion is laughable. Owners of residential units quasi-legally (at best) offered on AirBnb/VRBO can just lower their “hosting” prices until they undercut hotels to get the occupancy rates they want, because they have lower overhead & fixed costs than hotels.

      1. Are you seriously contending that a lesser revenue is not a disincentive across the board? Surely his point that some will be dissuaded from offering residential units as short-term rentals is valid.

        1. I would not say that reducing the revenue potential for quasi-legal or patently illegal short-term rentals would never act as a disincentive (“across the board”) to the marginal “host”.

          But do I think if a few more hotels are built that this will increase supply enough in the legitimate hotel room market to move prices in the quasi-legal or patently illegal short-term rental market and in so doing meaningfully reduce supply in the quasi-legal or patently illegal short-term rental market? No. Many “hosts” are relatively price insensitive.

      2. No one wants to undercut anything. The main driver of offering units for short term rates are the premiums they can command over long term tenants. If more hotel supply is added this premium gets eroded and balances the scale towards long term rentals. This city does not just have a housing shortage. It has a hotel shortage.

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