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• Oakland gets a taste for gourmet
10.16.2009 Outlet: San Francisco Chronicle When Jeremy Umland was considering opening a second location of his popular San Francisco restaurant, Ozumo, he considered Napa and Walnut Creek. Instead, he decided to follow the money. "Investors and developers, all with a lot more cash to risk • 'Duck' Into Citizen Hotels Grange Restaurant For Some 'Fowl Play' 10.14.2009 Outlet: HotelChatter Where: 926 J St. [map], Sacramento, CA, United States, 95814 October 15, 2009 at 9:19 AM | by EricRosen | 0 Comments When it opened last December, we told you all about the geeky glory of the Citizen Hotel in Sacramento. Now we want to tell • Hotels get creative to cope with hard times 10.12.2009 Outlet: Miami Herald - Online, The Faced with the toughest financial crunch in decades, hotels are moving beyond typical discounts and offering unusual promotions to lure clients and create buzz. The 27-room Crane's BeachHouse in Delray Beach, for example, offers a ''The Bed-in for • I'M ASITTING IN MY OWN PRIVATE CABANA HERE AT THE HOTEL MAYA SWAGO. 10.12.2009 Outlet: KTLA Morning News - KTLA-TV HI, ALLIE. Reporter: GOOD MORNING, YOU GUYS. I'M ASITTING IN MY OWN PRIVATE CABANA HERE AT THE HOTEL MAYA SWAGO. WE'RE GOING TO WIND UP DINE LARESTAURANT WEEK. COMING UP WE'LL SHOW YOU ALL THE APPETIZERS, ENTTRAYS, ALL COMING UP LIVE FROM LONG BEA • In San Francisco, hotel rooms for less than $100 10.09.2009 Outlet: Austin American-Statesman - Online TRAVEL By Helen Anders SAN FRANCISCO The Good Hotel is a good hotel. Its rooms are small and spare but contemporary-cool, and they have everything you need: a bathroom, a safe, TV, free wireless, an iPod dock and clever art. Some rooms are even ai • San Francisco Japantown hotel delivers anime immersion 10.02.2009 Outlet: Los Angeles Times - Online Check into mainstream manga: A Bay Area Best Western rethemed by a boutique hotel chain buzzes with vibrant comic sensibility. Click to Enlarge Three unique restaurants in San Francisco Hotel Guide Restaurant Guide Attraction Guide • HOTELS 10.01.2009 Outlet: Los Angeles Times Infobox Infographic Hoping to keep its 119 rooms filled, Hotel Erwin on Venice Beach is offering an unusual promotion for its countercultural clientele: an Ink and Stay package that includes $100 toward a tattoo and a bottle of tequila to numb • Treating Your Employees Like Honored Guests = Outstanding Customer Service = Business Success 09.30.2009 Outlet: Fast Company - Online FC Expert Blog This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and expresses that expert's views alone. Chip Conley, founder and CEO of Joie de Vivre, the largest group of boutique hotels in California, believes in treating hi • Gourmet Stimulus Plan 09.30.2009 Outlet: North Bay Bohemian More than two dozen restaurants are offering $25 prix fixe menus as part of the inaugural Santa Cruz Restaurant Week, Oct. 1-8. Full menus are posted at www.santacruzrestaurantweek.com. Our advice: make reservations. Aptos Sanderling's Oc |
Groundbreaking Ceremony for Mission & Steuart Hotel Project to Take Place This Thursday
Mayor Willie L. Brown, Jr., and Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) Executive Director Michael T. Burns will be featured speakers at the official groundbreaking ceremony for the Mission & Steuart Hotel Project, an innovative development of property owned by the MTA. The ceremony will take place at noon on Thursday, October 9th, at the corner of Mission & Steuart Streets, across The Embarcadero from the Ferry Building. The MTA oversees the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni) and the city's Department of Parking & Traffic.
Mission & Steuart Hotel Partners, LLC is the developer for the hotel project, and the firm of Heller Manus Architects is the architect. Mission & Steuart Hotel Partners is composed of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, a hotel operator, and Emerald Fund, a development firm, both of which are based in San Francisco. The developer will build a boutique hotel of about 200 rooms on the site, and will operate the hotel with a 51-year lease and an option for a 14-year extension. Under the lease, the developer will pay all costs of operating, maintaining, and repairing the hotel, and will pay rent to the MTA estimated to average about $4,790,000 a year over the lease's life, for a total of over $300 million.
The Mission & Steuart site, a former Muni bus layover yard, had been selected in the Municipal Railway Assets Development Study as a site for commercial development to increase Muni's revenues. The study concluded that a hotel had the best potential to provide Muni with substantial long-term revenues on the site, and would be the use that would be the most compatible with the surrounding area. The new revenue source for Muni is also a major step in complying with one of the mandates of Proposition E, approved by the voters in November 1999. That proposition authorized the creation of the MTA to provide for improved transit and transportation in San Francisco, and includes a mandate that additional sources of revenue be developed so that adequate and predictable levels of funding can be provided for the agency.
There are plans for a restaurant and retail development on the ground floor of the hotel. The retail space will include a rent-free location for a combination transit museum and retail shop to be operated by the Market Street Railway, a non-profit group that is dedicated to the acquisition, restoration, and operation of historic transit vehicles in San Francisco.
Both the staff and the guests at the hotel will get various incentives to use transit in San Francisco. The project will integrate stops and passenger shelters for Muni's F Market & Wharves historic streetcar line into the building, as well as restrooms for Muni operators. The F-line stops and passenger shelters at the site are located on Don Chee Way, named for the late Don Chee, Muni's senior project manager in charge of the construction for the F Market & Wharves line.
Land on the property next to The Embarcadero that is owned by the Port of San Francisco will be used for outdoor café seating and landscaping under an agreement between the port and the MTA.
