Post #430160 by martiki on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 6:37 AM

Latest news from the Fairmont, and I'd call it promising:

From the SF Chronicle:

1_23_09

Ever dream about living in the Fairmont Hotel, with its beautiful bay views and easy access to the Tonga Room? You just may get the chance.

Owner Maritz Wolff & Co. intends to do an environmental study of a plan to convert 226 hotel rooms into condominiums in the Fairmont tower, the 1961 addition to the storied 1907 hotel.

Plans call for deconstructing the tower and replacing its rooms with as many as 160 condos, which could range in size from 1,700 to 2,000 square feet. Entire floors - at a whopping 7,500 square feet - also may be available, according to company spokeswoman Susan Sagy.

Sagy declined to name a price for the new digs, but in the past couple of years, new condos in luxury hotels have sold for more than $1 million. And that doesn't factor in the monthly condo fees.

She said the project would not add any height or bulk to the existing tower, which rises from atop Nob Hill at the corner of Sacramento and Powell streets.

The project would take several years to get through the city bureaucracy, and current economic trends may have changed by then, Sagy said. The condo notion also reflects Maritz Wolff's belief that large convention-oriented hotel business has migrated South of Market and that the Fairmont should be geared toward tourists.

"The Fairmont is better as a smaller size, grande dame of boutique hotels," Sagy said.

Discussions about condo conversions at the Fairmont started in 2005 but were tripped up by a temporary moratorium and city legislation limiting the number of hotel rooms that can be converted each year.

• Robert Selna

Conversion of the existing 1961 tower would seem to me to be more optimistic for Tonga than a demolition.