While plans for redeveloping the northwest corner of Clement Street and 23rd Avenue, upon which the historic 4-Star Theater sits at 2200 Clement, have been drafted by SIA Consulting, including a set of plans which envision a 6-story building rising up to 60 feet in height upon the site, with 16 residential units over a ground floor of new retail/commercial space, and building permits for a less ambitious two-story addition and conversion of the building into 5 residential units, with a ground floor retail space, were requested late last year, a project has yet to be approved and the permit request appears to have been abandoned.

And the 109-year-old Richmond District building, which was purchased for $1.45 million in December of 2006 and has been marked as a contributor to the (discontiguous) San Francisco Neighborhood Movie Theater Historic District, is now back on the market with a $1.8 million price tag.

We’ll keep you posted and plugged-in.

16 thoughts on “Historic Theater Back on the Market, Plans Have Been Drawn”
  1. Build 10 stories on top of it but THAT is a facade that needs to be preserved. Together with the next door market. Same colors. IKEA generic on top for a pleasant juxtaposition.

  2. Convert it to a pre-fixe dinner + movie night with 6pm and 830PM seatings, with a bar in the front slinging drinks to both diners and random passers-by. And, of course, build the six story housing on top.

  3. If the plans were abandoned, shouldn’t they be referred to in the past tense (as in “envisionED a six story…”)? It might sound like nitpicking, but present tense makes it hard to follow whether those are original plans – that are dormant – or new ones that have superseded the old.

    1. The two sets of plans were drafted concurrently and neither has superseded the other. But a permit request for the 4-story version, which would get the ball rolling, appears to have been abandoned.

  4. So basically it’s all abandoned with SIA’s plans not having gone through planning and the previous plan having expired? This is just another old property with no associated entitlement up for sale. Not exactly breaking news but what’s one to do when new development is moribund in SF.

  5. Who wants to buy this and face a planning fight against a hollow sentimentality about time in the past when there was a trade in Hong Kong films?

    There should be a requirement for everyone opposing the redevelopment of movie theaters to submit his/her total expenditures at the theater in question for the trailing 36 months.

    What will get built here? Nothing for five years at least.

  6. What we are looking at is the Manhattanization of The Sunset. The dominoes are already falling. Don’t believe me? Just look at what’s happening at Sloat Blvd and the Great Highway. So long Sloat Garden Center. Hello huge highrise, where there’s nothing to do and nowhere to go and eat. Oh, wait. You can go to the oh so pathetic zoo next door and cry over the trapped giraffes.

      1. So the poster got the neighborhood wrong AND claims a six story building is Manhattanization. Come on, NIMBYs, step up your game!

        1. “Giraffes” was spelled correctly. 🙂

          From a technical point of view , the claim is probably correct: if you list all the buildings in Manhattan, the median height is likely six stories (or something close to it). But the median height of Pasco WA may be three stories or of Waco TX 2.6,…etc. so it doesn’t mean much , I reckon, to describe the shorter of the proposals as being the Pascoization of the Sunset…er, Richmond. Maybe the best NYC boro to use is Staten Island, and call it the “Richmondization of the Richmond”

  7. There is nothing historic left on the exterior of the building. I don’t know about the interior and if the plans were to keep parts of it. The price is generally for the lot. If they keep the facade it may cut through some red tape but just start over.

  8. Too bad the 16-unit plans were abandoned. It would be nice to start to see significant new housing on the west side.

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