Content area
Full Text
SAN FRANCISCO - A partnership headed by noted San Francisco chef-owner Reed Hearon of the Rose Pistola and Black Cat restaurants has beaten out a rival group from Australia to win preliminary rights to develop a large and potentially lucrative tract of waterfront land controlled by the Port of San Francisco.
Hearon is the leader of the management team that created Rowena Wu's immensely popular Restaurant LuLu, a high-volume Mediterranean concept south of Market Street here. His two North Beach restaurants and smaller Rose's Cafe enjoy popular and critical acclaim. A dual-restaurant proposal by Hearon's management company, Nice Ventures Inc., was selected by port commissioners as the best of the suggested uses for the 20,000 square feet of land at the south end of Rincon Park, a public area under development.
Port commissioners agreed to negotiate with Nice Ventures exclusively for development rights to the restaurant site, which offers sweeping views of the bay, city skyline and San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. A spokesman for the port said the agency envisions an opening in 2000 for the restaurant and park, which would anchor a stretch of the Embarcadero Promenade between Howard and Harrison streets.
Official estimates are that the project could cost up to $8 million to develop, and it could generate more than $19 million in annual foodservice sales.
In light of that lofty volume projection, some local industry veterans have wondered if a dearth of interest in the project - it attracted only two development proposals from the Hearon-led and Australian groups - was a sign that prospective investors have begun rejecting the city's controversial workplace policies, payroll tax and bureaucracy.
Based on the port staffs reaction to Nice Ventures' proposal and initial conversations between port managers and Hearon, "We're very likely...