Posted Apr 6, 2021, 2:23 AM
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Join Date: Dec 2016
Location: San Francisco
Posts: 24,177
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Quote:
Real Estate Deals: The curtain rises on the Bowes Center
By Alex Barreira – Staff Reporter, San Francisco Business Times
Apr 2, 2021 Updated Apr 2, 2021, 6:57pm PDT
Good deeds really can pay off. Look no further than the corner of Hayes Street and Van Ness Avenue, home of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s new 14-story student housing and learning complex, the Ute and William K. Bowes Jr. Center for Performing Arts, aka the Bowes Center.
It was jump-started by a $46.4 million gift from the building’s namesake, the largest donation ever made to a music conservatory for a new development. SFCM President David Stull said the 2018 gift was offered “long before there was a credible reason to invest” in the project, noting that Bowes’ “incredible” belief and support early on got the project moving quickly.
A public campaign to raise an additional $125 million was launched in spring 2018. That effort is nearing completion, the conservatory said. The remaining funds for the project have been secured through tax-exempt financing.
First imagined as a housing complex, the project evolved into a vision for an interdisciplinary hub offering beds and class exchange for San Francisco Ballet students, and a “gateway to the Civic Center” for the community, according to Stull. A 100-seat ground-level venue — 79 feet across Van Ness from the San Francisco Symphony’s Davies Hall — gives the public access to hundreds of free student and community group performances each year.
The Bowes Center doubles the conservatory’s square footage and includes 420 student beds (in sound-proof dorms, so they can practice), and suites for visiting artists and teachers. Its crown jewels are two performance halls, publicly accessible on the first floor, and with tremendous views of the cityscape on the 11th. There’s also rehearsal spaces, conference and teaching facilities, a recording studio and technology hall, a restaurant with a live stage, a terrace and observation deck, and a student center dining and commons area.
The completion of the project’s core housing in time to welcome students for the 2020 academic semester – despite the pandemic – directly resulted from the school extending its own generosity.
When the country ground to a halt, the Bowes Center was one of the few projects in the city that could continue as scheduled, qualifying as essential because it included affordable housing. On the third and fourth floors are 27 rent-stabilized units, added to replace the apartment building SFCM had acquired and razed as part of the construction and offered back to the residents at their original rents . . . .
A new class of students — and the corner’s former residents — moved in by October for an academic semester that, all-in-all, started just one month later than usual. Finishing touches on the teaching and venue facilities are expected to wrap up by May 1 . . . .
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https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfranc...eals-2021.html
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