As we outlined in October of last year:
Built in 1912, the 15,000-square-foot Our Lady of Guadalupe Church at 906 Broadway was designated San Francisco Landmark #204 back in 1993.
The Archdiocese of San Francisco sold the church along with the adjacent 4,700-square-foot residential building, uphill at 908 Broadway, to an investor for $2.3 million in 2013.
And in 2016, Startup Temple Holdings, backed by a Russian tech entrepreneur turned Silicon Valley venture capitalist, purchased the buildings for $7.0 million and opened Hack Temple (“Hackt”), an event venue for “international thought leaders” and a “gospel of innovation” within the existing space.
Plans to formally covert the church into an educational facility, “for international technology startup founders and teams entering US market and aiming to raise capital in Silicon Valley,” were drawn.
The aforementioned Landmark designation was subsequently amended by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors to include a whole host of the church’s interior features and further limit any alterations.
And the church, which is zoned for residential use, is now back on the market with a $7.5 million price tag, a price tag which doesn’t include the residential [rectory] building at 908 Broadway which is also on the market and is being offered together or separately with an additional $5.5 million ask.
And noting that “the Church was booked solid, prior to COVID,” and that the adjacent Rectory building, which was recently remodeling and converted into a co-living space, “is operating and as popular as ever,” new marketing materials for the buildings have been drafted and the list price of the two building portfolio has just been reduced to $7 million, combined.
The days of wild-eyed millennial wanna-be hacker bros moving into San Francisco from all over the world in an unending stream, ready to pay absurd rents for dank, underfurnished co-working and/or co-living spaces in exchange for the slim chance to come up with some app or kinda working website, sell it to an existing internet goliath and cash out at age 30 the better to spend one’s “e-tirement” collecting rare air-cooled Porsches, working on one’s cars and playing ultimate frisbee are probably over.
Hopefully the new coronavirus ended that era and local greedheads trying to strike it rich by exploiting that influx will move on to more productive and useful endeavors such as building actual housing for folks already living here.
The 2016 seller of this place is still laughing about it all the way up the back nine.
That’s what they said in 2002. But they returned in force in the 2010’s and worse still spread from their Marina stronghold into the Mission, leaving residents with a Sophie’s choice of the Calle 24 tree people or the Tesla tykes. Fun times.
Spot on.
You think Brahma moved here with the finance bros of the 80s and 90s or was a free spirit riding a fat inheritance into retirement?
So, they will return again in about a decade? Fun times till then, huh?
But wait, this time around isn’t the fed using cheap money DURING a crisis, not after? Just hope the piggy bank doesn’t run out…
Another prescient view, is to check how many non-US tech companies there were in 2002 and then in 2010 and now …
That’s what they said in 2002. I think the next time around, Oakland will be the new place to get a cheap room or rent an entire hacker house.
That was also said, back in ’02
But where will the hackers pray now?
Anywhere the ‘prayer app’ opens up ??
Buy the bust, sell the boom. Someone will snatch this up and sell it for a pretty penny in a few years. Will the Prop 13 reduction after this sale change city hall’s tune on the protected status?
More interestingly is the off market sale by the San Francisco Catholic Archdiocese at the below market price in 2013. The Archdiocese quietly sold many San Francisco properties over the years to its “friends” when its needs money for abuse payouts. These buyers then flip the assets for huge profits. Someone of some Catholic stature should ask why this is allowed to happen over and over?