SF’s Sir Francis Drake Hotel is under new ownership. What does its future hold? - SF Gate

surongtana.blogspot.com

San Francisco’s iconic Sir Francis Drake Hotel, which has watched over Powell and Sutter streets since 1928, was quietly sold in April. The hotel — a Gothic Revival and Renaissance icon in the city — is famous not only for its historic place on Union Square, but for being the second hotel that Kimpton, a well-known Bay Area brand, bought in its earliest days. The Sir Francis Drake was a staple of San Francisco’s civic life for nearly a century, but the 21-story, 416-room hotel has not reopened since March 2020, during the onslaught of the pandemic.

Why does the historic hotel remain closed, even as the pandemic has eased in San Francisco? SFGATE, in an attempt to uncover answers, found the hotel was actually sold by its owners, Pebblebrook Hotel Trust, in April of this year.

Pebblebrook — a publicly traded real estate investment trust that owns 10 hotels in San Francisco — acquired Sir Francis Drake from Chartres Lodging Group in 2010 for $90 million, with Kimpton continuing to manage the hotel after the acquisition. But in April 2021, Pebblebrook sold the storied (and some say haunted) hotel to Northview Hotel Group, according to spokespeople for the group as well as Pebblebrook. The sale, which stands as Northview’s first San Francisco hotel, closed for $156.7 million, according to the San Francisco Business Times.

Alan Reay, the president of Atlas Hospitality Group, a hotel brokerage firm, said in an interview that he estimates Northview “scored a roughly 30% discount from the $225 million the hotel would have fetched in 2019.”

Spokespeople for Sir Francis Drake’s new owner, Northview, would not reveal the plans for the historic hotel, but told SFGATE they would release further details in the next month or so. The Connecticut-based company declined to provide more information.

For now, the future of the hotel remains uncertain.

What is certain is the significant cultural role the Sir Francis Drake Hotel has played in San Francisco. Opened nearly a century ago to fanfare and celebration, the hotel has hosted some of the nation’s greatest starlets and luminaries, such as Barbara Stanwyck and myriad vaudeville players.

“San Francisco’s ability adequately to accommodate the growing throngs which annually wend their way to the Pacific Coast, together with those of the city’s inhabitants who enjoy the quiet luxury of hotel life, was immeasurably strengthened yesterday with the opening ... of the new Hotel Sir Francis Drake,” reads an article in the San Francisco Chronicle from 1928.

The story celebrated the hotel’s “lavish” furnishings, as well as its “commodious guest rooms” and “health-giving” window panes made of Vitaglass. It was built for a whopping $5 million, or about $72 million in today’s dollars. More than 10,000 people attended its grand opening.

“Each room in the hotel Sir Francis Drake is equipped with both tub and shower baths, running ice water, private radio, bedside telephones, reading lamps, etc.,” the article reads, citing what would have been luxuries at the time.

The hotel also famously has a 1920s-era “Prohibition Room” above an elevator where staff would hide alcohol and could look out through peepholes in case the cops showed up.

“Guests staying at the hotel had bottles of alcohol hidden in laundry baskets brought up to their room, and drinks could be delivered via a small door hidden in each room,” Curbed SF wrote of the Prohibition-era sneakery.

The stories don’t stop there. Given the hotel’s storied history and even more storied guests, many believe the building to be haunted. The rumor likely begins with a tragic accident that happened at the hotel in 1965, when a 26-year-old up-and-coming actor fell to his death from eight stories above after a night of drinking.

“The women screamed — the men just stood there with their mouths open,” a policeman told the Associated Press after the accident.

These days, blogs abound with rumors of the hotel’s hauntings. Guests have said they’ve seen windows open untouched, curtains bustle and “strange shadows and disembodied voices,” according to one ghost blog.

Sir Francis Drake Hotel, once a party palace for the city’s elite, continues to serve as a destination for alcohol imbibers. On the 21st floor perches Lizzie’s Starlight, formerly known as the Starlight Room, which draws partygoers and drinkers with its fine cocktails and famous Sunday drag brunch. Lizzie’s Starlight remains closed, along with the hotel. In August, San Francisco nightlife character Harry Denton, who created the Starlight Room, died at the age of 77.

The hotel is also recognizable for its famous Beefeater doormen, who dress in bright red uniforms and greet guests and passersby on the sidewalk. Longtime Beefeater Tom Sweeney, a recognizable face on Union Square for more than 40 years, retired in January 2020, just before the onset of the COVID-19 lockdown.

The hotel has changed hands multiple times since its 1928 opening. Conrad Hilton purchased the hotel in 1938 — reportedly his first hotel outside of Texas. In 1941, Westin (then Western Hotels) acquired the property, before it was sold once more to Princess Hotels in 1970. Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants bought the hotel in the late 1980s. It was then sold a few more times to various trusts and firms that most travelers have likely never heard of — SFD Partners, Chartres Lodging Group and Pebblebrook in 2010.

Talks of rebranding, and perhaps renaming, the Sir Francis Drake Hotel began in 2020, according to SFGATE’s Chris McGinnis. The hotel’s namesake, Sir Francis Drake, once celebrated around the world for his feats of seafaring and discovery, also has a dark side. The explorer reportedly enslaved at least 1,300 Africans on three different voyages to the continent in the 1500s.

A spokesperson for former manager Kimpton Hotels said, “Kimpton has been working with property ownership to evaluate a name change and potential rebranding of the property.”

That was in July 2020, when the hotel remained closed, as it remains more than a year later.

What will become of this famed San Francisco institution? Only time will tell.