The popular four-year-old SoMa restaurant Marlowe, which sits across the street from the CalTrain station, is in danger of having to move or close as an LA-based developer has bought the building with plans to demolish it and build a 21-story office building there. As the Business Times reports, LA-based CIM Group bought the building a year ago and have been working on plans to redevelop the squat, brick, 60,000-square-foot building at 330 Townsend Street as a 383,000-square-foot complex with offices and a two-story retail galleria at the base.
Marlowe, which opened in early 2010, marked the beginning of the fruitful partnership of restaurateur Anna Weinberg and chef Jennifer Puccio who have gone on to open the larger Park Tavern and The Cavalier. Michael Bauer helped put Marlowe on the map with an early review in which he raved about the burger, which has always been a mix of beef with a little bit of lamb, and which has remained a super-popular menu item both there and at Park Tavern.
The property is now prime real estate as it stands to be a block away from the new Central Subway line of the Muni, whenever that opens, and directly across from CalTrain. It's also in the white hot SoMa office market, where another developer is planning to build a 16-story, 688,000-square-foot office building nearby at 610 and 620 Brannan Street, on the corner of the block now occupied by the Flower Mart.
We've reached to Weinberg for comment on the Marlowe situation, and of course, as of now, Marlowe has no immediate plans to close.
