Proposal: Hotel California

Rejected names: REACH Farther; CEEALAR SF

Update: Red Victorian not available @April 24, 2022 10:45 AM (PDT)

Called the agent running the site; apparently the Red Victorian is being sold off on May 6th. Efficient market hypothesis strikes again!

There’s some chance the deal falls through (5%? idk), and the agent offered to contact us if that happens.

Summary

The Red Victorian is:

• A historic 21-bed, 14-bath hotel
• 11.2k sqft, with a 2.3k sqft storefront on the first floor
• Located in the center of the lively Haight-Ashbury neighborhood
• Next to Golden Gate Park and the Panhandle
• Currently listed for $5M

Austin proposes to buy this property and turn it into a living, working, and community space for people trying to change the world.

Location

• Right in the center of a quirky/nice neighborhood
• Easy access to two giant parks
• Close to the Neighborhood?

Layout

Inspirations

• Berkeley REACH: Community hub for people to cowork/crash
• Reflections on Berkeley REACH
• Website
• Fell apart during COVID 😢
• EA Hotel: Subsidized hotel in Blackpool, UK
• Overview
• (note: Greg is an investor in Manifold)
• Website (now known as CEAALAR)
• Great idea! But... who wants to live in Blackpool...?

Philosophy

• People matter
• Make sure people’s needs are met
• Shelter (obviously)
• Physical exercise (jogging groups?, morning workouts?)
• Mental health, emotional support
• Sleep/quiet at night
• Foster serendipity
• Easy to meet other cool people
• Easy to enjoy the surrounding food, weather, parks
• Have a high bar
• This isn’t a commercial endeavor seeking ROI; you can’t just buy a room
• Application process for long-term residents
• But short-term tenants can drop by and try it for a night or two
• Nomad-friendly
• People may want to only spend a few months of the year here. Let’s make that possible!

Financing Models

• Loan
• Down payment: 20% = 1m? Austin could almost cover this.
• How do $5m-sized loans work
• How much free cash flow is needed to service the loan? Is it covered by expected rent?
• Any tax things we need to sort out?
• Grant
• Would someone like FTX FF or OpenPhil or CEA be interested in funding this completely?
• Or be interested in providing the loan
• Impact Cert
• Could we sell an impact certificate on this???

Questions

• What’s the current state of the Red Victorian?
• Who’s living there? Is it completely empty?
• If so: Why? is the housing market in a low state in SF?
• How much work is needed to renovate it?
• Are cool people expected to continue coming in to SF?
• Or are they going to be migrating to east bay/NY?
• Austin is biased towards thinking SF is really cool, but maybe that’s a temporary COVID measure
• Have REACH and EA Hotel been worth the resource investment?
• REACH fell apart
• Sinclair: Trying to be a lot of things. Hostel, community center
• Liked playing board games there. Did consider living there.
• EA Hotel
• Super cool, but haven’t necessarily seen too much amazing work produced??
• Is there any legal/bureaucratic red tape around owning and managing a hotel??

Timeline

• TODO

Next steps

Reach out to owners/agents of Red Victorian to assess interest

Call

Alternative Locations

• Find results here: https://www.loopnet.com/search/hotels/san-francisco-ca/for-sale/
• $4.2m, Albion Hotel - 20 units, in Mission but no bathrooms??
• $5m, Market - 34 units, 5 commercial spaces, 16k square feet

Sinclair’s musings

Sinclair: “REACH farther out”

• People are lacking a nice environment around them
• Live in houses that are badly furnished, with only soylent
• Probably isn’t how a project trying to get smart people to do smart things should look like
• Maybe there’s danger of encompassing a person’s personal life into their job
• Cult-like dynamics, makes it harder to leave if you have disagreements, easier to abuse people
• Maybe there’s already enough competition for group-house like living in SF
• Genesis seemed like a cool idea but they’re falling apart now

Cool people who might want housing

• Diane Kim/Kyle Tan
• Sinclair Chen
• Michelle Chang
• Ida Mayer
• Eric Jang
• Arnav Dugar
• Carol Chen
• Jose Luis Ricon
• ... you? Contact Austin (akrolsmir@gmail.com), or just add your name above!

Organizers/Advisors

• Austin Chen
• June Liu?
• Greg Colbourn?
• Ruth Grace Wong?
• Jason Benn?
• (reach out if you’d like to help!)