Low-income housing project moving forward at site of iconic “Defenestration”
“The quirky art installation — couches, beds and at least one bathtub appearing to exit the windows of a long-empty hotel building at Sixth and Howard streets — would be removed under a city plan to redevelop the site into a $18.8 million affordable-housing project that is finally moving forward.
In January, The City signed a preliminary contract with Mercy Housing to build a nine-story, 67-unit affordable housing project on the site, according to records.
Installed by artist Brian Goggin in 1997, Defenestration was supposed to remain bolted onto the sides of the former Hugo Hotel for only a year. It has lasted nearly sixteen years, while the hotel’s former owners half-heartedly searched for a buyer, and then while The City, which acquired the 104-year-old, four-story building via eminent domain, searched for funding.
The Redevelopment Agency acquired the site via San Francisco’s first eminent domain lawsuit in 25 years, but any project was put on hold during that agency’s dissolution.
The building onto which the art is bolted and hangs as if suspended in mid-defenestration has been empty since before the Loma Prieta earthquake.
The City paid $4.6 million to the hotel’s former owners, the Patel family of Hillsborough, to acquire the hotel after winning an eminent domain lawsuit in 2009. The family was criticized for allowing the hotel to deteriorate and not pushing forward with a rehab scheme, something it was able to do thanks to the low property tax assessment rate.
The family bought the property in 1964 for $400,000, according to records.”
Roberts, Chris. The Examiner 21 March 2013.