Building Sale Signals End to Prada HQ Plans in San Francisco
Plans for Prada to open a West Coast headquarters in San Francisco’s fashionable Union Square were officially put to rest last week when the Grosvenor Group, an English real estate company, purchased the site at 185 Post St. for $11 million.
According to a Grosvenor representative, the company would renovate the space and perhaps lease it to another high-fashion retailer. Grosvenor’s California retail holdings include 180 Post St. and 251 Post St. in San Francisco and 308–310 N. Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.
Prada purchased the building in 1996. The Milan, Italy–based design house intended for the building’s architecture to be as thought-provoking as that of its stores in Beverly Hills and New York’s SoHo district.
The man who would have been in charge of making Prada’s 185 Post St. building unique was Rem Koolhaas, the Dutch architect who built the Beverly Hills and SoHo stores. His plans included covering much of the nine-story building with two cube-shaped, stainless-steel faccedil;ades, which would have been separated by an open-air terrace on the sixth floor.Impressionistic and sometimes cloud-like perforations would have been made in the faccedil;ades.
Koolhaas’ plans were approved by San Francisco’s municipal government in the late 1990s, but the company’s different responsibilities around the globe precluded the completion of the plans, according to an architect who works at Koolhaas’ Office for Metropolitan Architecture, based in Rotterdam, Netherlands. “Prada was really interested, but it was a market issue,” said the architect, who declined to give his name.
Prada did not respond to interview requests, and Koolhaas was not available at press time. Prada opened its only San Francisco store, located at 140 Geary St., in 2001.
The 185 Post St. building stood vacant for nine years. San Franciscans have looked forward to new businesses occupying the building because the Union Square district is in a boom period, said Kazuko Morgan, senior director of San Francisco real estate company Cushman & Wakefield.One square foot of commercial space costs $200 to $350 on the first block of Union Square’s Grant Street, according to Morgan.
European brands such as Hermegrave;s, Bulgari and Cartier have operated stores in the district. In the past few years, retailers such as Zara and Sharper Image have moved to the area.
