From the outside it’s just blocked sidewalks and fences at the moment, but walk down Hemlock off Van Ness and you’ll see that the demolition work on the old United Artists Galaxy Theater (which closed somewhere around 2006 I believe) has started. What’s going up in its place is a 13 story building with 105+ condos, 180 off street parking spaces, and 15,000 square feet of retail space in on the ground level. The units will actually be rather large for the area at 1,055 square feet. You’ll also notice on this old SocketSite article that this was reported on way back in 2007.
All this time I thought that they were just sitting on this eyesore, but it appears that they were actually in the process of demolishing it. Rumor had spread awhile back that the retail space was to be a Trader Joe’s. That would have been nice, but obviously turned out to not be the case. As to what took so long to get this blight swapped out in to a very livable space is anyone’s guess although it could easily have been the case that the urban lower Polk NIMBY wonder team of Chapman-Oberdorf-Garcia (or others) had something to do with it as obviously there could be a fire/prostitution threat from new condo construction or some other bullshit like that.
7 Comments until now
Interesting to her it is finally being demolished.
The original building didn’t last that long (25-30 years or so?) and vaguely remember the the Galaxy had a lot of review and design changes to have the theater built.
Thank god. I usually don’t like to see existing buildings go, but the theater was nothing special inside, and was positively ugly on the outside. Then it sat empty for years; ugh. While I’ll never be able to afford a condo, especially a “rather large” one, I’m glad something will be occupying that space.
The original plan & developer was scrapped (not sure when) and it’s now going to be apartments, not condos. Here’s a PDF of the new project: http://www.howardswright.com/wp-content/uploads/1285_external_copy.pdf
Hideous like every new building on Van Ness is. What a disappointment. But at least the space is being used.
As of June, SF Planning has them listed as condos, which is why I used the term. Shame that all the images show this rinky dink shit “modern” building that SF seems to love to build currently. Someone needs to go to NYC, LA, or any large European city to see how to actually design for the 21st century. At least we’ve got the de Young…
The new Public Utilities building looks interesting. http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2007/11/13/rebuilt_sf_public_utilities_commission_hq.php
I was initially encouraged by the new PUC building as it held promise of being something interesting, but as it’s fleshed out, I have to say that I’ve been let down. Maybe the end result will be great and at the very least, it will look a lot better than most anything else around there that’s been built in the last 70 years.