SF: Room with an (X-rated) View
How does a city landmark listed on the National Register of Historic Places become a porn palace? Read on…
Back in the age of the dot.com explosion, when websites multiplied like rabbits, office space was at an all time premium in the city. No wonder then that a Dallas developing group, Eikon, proposed to convert the hulking mass of the Mission Armory into office space. But Eikon was underestimating the dot.com backlash. For every BMW driver trying to take over the city, there was a bus pass owner trying to take it back. In this case, Eikon was defeated by a strong resistance from Mission residents who feared gentrification of their neighborhood.
But the building is attractive. Not beautiful, in any sense, but striking: a mouldering castle; over 300,000 square feet of dark, aging brick spanning half a block at the corner of Mission and 14th St. We should not be surprised that another developer took a crack at it. And indeed in 2002, another tech time developer, Fowler-Flanagan, tried to convert the building into what the Chronicle calls a “dot.com server farm.” This too failed, and when Fowler-Flanagan defaulted on its loan, Bar K (of Santa Rosa) stepped in.
In 2004, Bar K submitted what seemed to be promising plans to convert the Armory into 207 condos. These would be unusual homes, since not only would they be housed inside a Dungeons & Dragons looking facade, they’s also have to comply to strict laws preserving that facade. Since the building is a registered landmark, “its brick walls must be preserved, meaning that some proposed units in the donut structure would not have normal light exposure.” Such limits did not dampen Bar K’s enthusiasm, and the group went as far as to submit a proposal to the Planning Department and to begin negotiations with the “Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition, a vocal neighborhood group, on the number of affordable housing units in the project.”
Fast forward now to 2007. Today the Armory is owned by porn producer Peter Acworth; inside its thick walls, he has started Kink.com, an internet porn studio. An interesting choice for a historic former military building, to say the least, but not as interesting as what may happen next. According to Chronicle columnists Matier and Ross, Acworth “has approached the city Planning Department with the idea of converting some of the building into kinky condos – complete with Webcams for all the world to see. Internet voyeurs would be able to dial into the doings in the dwellings, for a fee.”
Very enterprising, that Acworth. But this plan is not a done deal, of course. The man himself admits
“My discussions with the Planning Department have been extremely hypothetical to say the least. There is no firm plan for using the Armory for anything but a conventional film studio for now.”
Socketsite wonders if the “condos” won’t be more like residential pads for Kink’s porn stars. Maybe. Hard to know who else would sign up to live in a porn studio with their bedrooms and bathrooms exposed to the world via internet webcams…
***photo credit: Le Blog Exuberance
