The Huntington Hotel on Nob Hill, which most recently had been rebranded as the Huntington again after spending four years as the Scarlet Huntington Hotel, is now closed until further notice along with its longtime restaurant, Big 4.
The reason appears to be financial, and likely a hangover from the pandemic.
As Bay Area News Group reports, the property is facing foreclosure and documents filed last month indicate that its owners are in default on a $56.2 million from Deutsche Bank in New York. The documents were filed August 16 at the San Francisco County Recorder’s Office.
Los Angeles-based Woodridge Capital bought the 136-room hotel in 2018 for a reported $51.9 million, so the extra $4.3 million on the loan may have been for renovations?
The default notice from Deutsche Bank says that Woodridge Capital, or its affiliate, currently owes them a total of $61.1 million including fees and penalties.
A notice on the hotel website says, "Thank you for visiting the historic Huntington Hotel. Please note that Nob Hill Spa, Big 4 Restaurant, and Huntington Hotel will all remain closed until further notice."
Bay Area News Group also notes that the San Francisco Tax Collector "has lodged a notice of a tax lien against the property, according to a filing posted on Sept. 9."
The hotel had been scheduled to reopen for business October 1 (2021?), and the website indicates a host of COVID safety protocols, though it's not clear that it ever reopened during the pandemic at all. Some Redditors were complaining in May that they had gift certificates for the Nob Hill Spa that they haven't been able to use. And the hotel's Facebook page last had a posting about the upcoming wedding season in early 2021.
The hotel began life in 2022 as an apartment building, and was soon converted into a hotel in 1924. It's named for Collis Potter Huntington, the railroad magnate and one of the "Big Four" of western railroads along with Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins (for whom the nearby hotel is named), and Charles Crocker. The hotel sits across the street from Huntington Park, which is on the site of Collis Huntington's former mansion — which was joined atop Nob Hill by Crocker's mansion, on the site of what's now Grace Cathedral, and Hopkins's mansion, where the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins now stands. The only remaining mansion of the group is the former James Flood Mansion built in 1886, now the Pacific Union Club, next to Huntington Park. It was designed by noted local architect Willis Polk.
As Bay Area News Group notes, the 12-story Huntington Hotel was briefly known in the 1920s as the tallest steel and brick structure west of the Mississippi.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
