In another sign of Mid-Market's continued comeuppance, Kaplan's, the 74-year-old army-navy store between 6th and 7th, is closing to make way for a 9-story hotel. The Kaplan family has struck a deal to sell the property to G and M Hospitality, the same group that's building the 174-room Hampton Inn on Mission between 5th and 6th, and the proposed 220-room hotel at 4th and Clementina, both of which we told you about back in April.
As the Business Times reports, the Kaplans have had the property since patriarch Benjamin Kaplan opened his store in 1939.
The Kaplan family survived the construction of BART and the decline of the once-grand boulevard into a squalid stretch known for drug dealing, vagrancy, and petty crime. Now it's rising again with the arrival of tech firms like Twitter, Dolby, Square, and Yammer, not to mention a few thousand units of new highrise housing.
The store has been a popular stock-up spot for Burners for the past couple decades, and owner Cathy Kaplan still says "God bless Larry Harvey" every year when August rolls around it's always their busiest month. And they're having a "retirement sale" now through the end of the year, so you may want to stock up on camelbacks before it's all picked over.
The new hotel, if it's approved, will be 100 rooms, and it will join the new boutique hotel from the Viceroy Group that's happening across the street in the former Renoir Hotel. That unnamed project will be designed by superstar designer Kelly Wearstler, and the two projects together mark a significant turning point for this long-suffering block of abandoned storefronts.
Maybe things will finally start moving on the Hibernia Bank building too? We can only dream.
Previously: Confirmed: Kelly Wearstler Designing Mid-Market Hotel With Rooftop Bar
