| Build it and They Will Come– Upscale Restaurants Get Ready to Feed Rincon Hill’s Future Masses | June 30th, 2008 |
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Among the towers changing our skyline– The Infinity at Beale and Folsom; One Rincon at the top of 1st Street; The Millennium at Fremont and Mission; SF Blu at Hawthorne and Folsom and 45 Lansing, just off 1st Street. Figuring out where the Rincon Hill neighborhood begins and ends is challenging. If you include all these buildings , it runs from Beale to Second and Mission to the Embarcadero. I think of the neighborhood’s heart as Lansing Street, a little horse alley that runs West off 1st Street between Folsom and Harrison. This pocket of primarily residential buildings, both old and new pushes right up to the crest of the hill, with City views on one side and water views on the other. To cater to these new well-heeled folks, upscale restaurants are moving into the neighborhood. Star chefs like Michael Mina and Nancy Oakes are ready to build out new eateries at The Infinity and The Millennium. And Pat Kuleto has already invested $100 million in his two new restaurants, Waterbar and Epic Roadhouse around the corner on the Embarcadero. Other new restaurants already open are Anchor and Hope, a 70-seat “seafood shack” on Minna, owned by Threefold, the same partners who started Town Hall; and Local Kitchen and Wine Bar, run by Ola Fendert of Oola in SOMA. These upscale eateries fit neatly into residential developers’ plans. There’s a cache about having star chefs running restaurants in their buildings. San Franciscans who have never gone East of 5th on Mission, or southward from the Financial District will start to get familiar with the area and begin to consider it part of the City’s fabric. They also turn Rincon Hill into a destination location and give it a sense of identity. The only downside to this exciting new neighborhood is how expensive it is. With only a handful of units built as affordable housing, there is an economic homogenity to the neighborhood that may flatten its character. On the flip side, developers in the neighborhood had to pay hefty fees to the City ($25 a square foot) so that affordable housing with suitable infrastructure could be built elsewhere. Leave a Reply |
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With at least half-a-dozen skyscraper condominiums either completed or under construction in and around Rincon Hill, and thousands of new residents will be swarming into the area within the next two years.