Over 10+ years ago
this corner was getting primed for development, John Saca went through all the
planning process and paid for both the entitlements and EIR. Shortly after getting the
green light to build the economy started to fall into a recession. Today
Sotiris Kolokotronis and Saca Development have come together to develop the
land.
Their proposal is
still in the early stages but the vision is a 200 room hotel and 250
apartments. With entitlements still in place for the previous project, getting approval
from the Planning & Design Committee and financing might be their
biggest hurdles. The Sacbee’s reported that last year Saca asked the city for some
assistance, so having Kolokotronis join as a partner might give the proposal
assistance the city won’t be providing.
The original Metropolitan
proposal had 320 condos and 190 hotel rooms with 13,000 sf ground floor retail.
With fewer apartments and ten more hotel rooms, my early guess is it might reach
300’. But we won’t know anything till the end of the year when the developers
submit their plans to the city. City Council member Steve Hansen is “Cautiously
optimistic” that work could begin at this location, and I totally agree. There
are a lot of factors that need to come together before this project can succeed,
so we better wait till next year before getting to excited.