Dive Brief:
- Skanska has signed a $38 million contract to convert a historic San Francisco commercial building into a 200-room hotel. The building at 1095 Market Street could re-open as a Yotel, a "microhotel" with 170-square-foot guest rooms, according to the San Francisco Business Times and SFGate.
- The eight-story, 72,000-square-foot building was built in 1904 and will receive a "top-to-bottom" overhaul, as well as seismic structural improvements.
- Skanska said it will also fit an additional floor into the structure at the ground floor to make the building nine stories tall.
Dive Insight:
According to the San Francisco Business Times, the developer, a joint venture of Synapse Development Group and Aquat, launched a crowdfunding campaign late last year to ask investors to kick in $2 million to $3 million for the project.
In other company project news this month, Skanska announced it won a $62 million contract for the renovation and expansion of Saint Francis Hospital in Tulsa, OK. Skanska will overhaul 130,000 square feet of the hospital’s current 28-operating-room surgery area, as well as add on 15,000 square feet of additional surgery space. The renovation also includes the building of a 27,000-square-foot "mechanical penthouse" atop the surgery wing.
If the building is ultimately used as a microunit hotel, it would follow the recent trend of developers downsizing the units in their properties. Particularly in high-rent areas like New York City, Hawaii and Portland, OR, developers using microapartments as a solution for affordable housing for people who make too much money to qualify for subsidized rent but not enough to afford a new, market-rate apartment.
