Founded as Wally Heider Recording back in 1969 and now known as Hyde Street Studios, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Santana, CCR, Dead Kennedys, Green Day, Tupac, Cake, Chris Isaak and a long list of significant others have all laid down tracks at 245 Hyde Street in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District.
But as proposed, the longest running multi-room recording studio in the Bay Area would be shuttered in order to make way for a modern eight story development to rise behind the studio’s historic Art Deco façade at the corner of Hyde and Eddy.
As designed by Costa Brown Architecture for the LLC which bought the 245-259 Hyde Street building for $3.2 million back in 2009, the proposed development would yield 94 condos over 16,000 square feet of ground floor retail space and an underground garage for 14 cars.
And as always, we’ll keep you posted and plugged-in.
Hope it doesn’t go the way of Hyde n Golden gate: all designed up for condos, wasn’t wild about the diagonal window sills in the first place, then sold off and earmarked for BMR’s, though the developer’s fees only covered half or so of the BMR construction bill, and so the city has to minifest the remaining money, and city hall claims that will take years. Meanwhile it sits, filthy, with a flower-stenciled green box surrounding.
Change happens… Looks good. Build it!
Please…PLEASE: this space – along with everything else in SF – is much, much too valuable to be given over to anything creative; at least creative and analog (though I’m sure proximity to the Tenderloin was important for many musician’s “scoring” [wink, wink])
That having been said, I don’t think much of the design: it looks like one took a normal building, aimed a reaaaaaaally big shotgun at it, and fired away. Can’t we just stick to coherent solids, without erratic voids ??
You seem to imply there’s no money in creativity. What a strange bias. This is the entertainment industry. Of course there’s money & value in it.
Well,maybe I was being overly broad: perhaps a better phrasing would be there’s “no room for creativity when the market doesn’t already see the value in it.” If you actually think we’re going to continue to see the heart of the city be given over to places to nurture indie artists – whatever their media – then no, I don’t agree with that…fewer recording studios for garage bands, fewer galleries, fewer poetry readings in funky little bookstores. OTOH, if Apple wants to clear out a city block for a sculpture garden of giant iwhatever’s….oh yeah, it’ll happen.
I suppose that’s true but in this case I wouldn’t consider Beyonce or Green Day indie acts. I also anecdotally think I’ve noticed a recent increase in galleries and cafes in the Tenderloin, if that’s any indication of what the market is seeing value in currently.
i was thinking more of CCR, but perhaps they were already well established when they visited. As for the rest, well, good: I’d be happy to be wrong…it’s just hard to envision it reading (most of) the stories on here.
As a musician myself, I think these pricey music studios are going the way of the dodo bird. Why would I pay $200/hour when I could spend $2000 and have an equally powerful yet mobile home-recording studio?
The home studio doesn’t measure up
Please please please tell me what I can get for $2000 that would be equally powerful to a professional recording studio.
Does your $2000 include walls that aren’t parallel?
Also, the rate is well under half of that $200/hr number you just made up.
I walk past this building everyday, I LOVE the history but that does not disappear with progress. BUILD IT NOW.
So SF loses another historic uriinal, boo hoo, next!
Remember when you could live in SF and be a musician in a band? Seems like ages ago.
You used to be able to buy a house on a high school diploma, too.
Pretty silly talk
Such a sad loss. What a great studio
Happy more housing is getting built. We don’t need to subsidize a dying music studio.
That studio has actually been thriving. Hard to book time to record because it’s in high demand. Sad that they are losing their building. I heard the building owner didn’t even tell them.
There is a large practice space at 251 Hyde. One of the cheaper spaces in the downtown core. Approx 50 rooms will be closed!