San Francisco’s newest rooftop restaurant will also be one of the largest rooftop bars in the city. Chotto Matte is opening later today at the recently completed 100 Stockton Street near Union Square. The building will also open the meeting and event space early next month by Convene. Morgan Stanley and Blatteis & Schnur are responsible for the development.
Chotto Matte interior design, rendering courtesy the restaurant
The Chotto Matte restaurant will serve Nikkei cuisine, a fusion of Japanese and Peruvian ingredients. The new eatery will span 17,000 square feet, making it the largest restaurant of its kind in the city, according to Blatteis & Schnur. Three thousand square feet will include a terrace overlooking Union Square and the urban skyline.
Below the restaurant, 100 Stockton is looking to open up the two-story meeting and event space on November 9th. Convene is a hospitality company that creates and manages venues for events, meetings, and office space. The team has stated they plan to reshape the 65,000-square-foot lease with six meeting rooms, in-house food, event production, and AV services. The space will be tailored to facilitate events like town halls, corporate events, and a wide array of in-person and virtual events.
Convene interior space, rendering by Convene
The opening of Chotto Matte comes during a turbulent period for the historic Union Square retail neighborhood. Just this week, the San Francisco Business Times reported that 200 Stockton Street is in trouble as borrowers have defaulted on its loan. Close to the park, Nordstrom closed their flagship location in the Westfield Mall this August.
In the first quarter of this year, Union Square’s vacancy rate reached 15.5%, which is unusually high compared with around 4% pre-pandemic but not completely desolate. For example, just before Nordstrom closed, IKEA opened its new location at the long-vacant 945 Market Street mall two blocks from Union Square, and a week ago, Union Square saw the opening of the Banana Republic along Geary Street. This week, the University of Toronto has revised its June study to show that, like other cities, San Francisco’s pandemic recovery is stronger than expected. Around two-thirds as much mobile phone activity was measured in the city compared to pre-pandemic activity.
100 Stockton Street, image by Gensler
The newly-opened facility at 100 Stockon Street is, in fact, an adaptive reuse of the 1974-built Macy’s Men’s Store designed by Morganelli & Heuman. The structure was stripped of its brutal stone wall and reclad by Gensler with floor-to-ceiling windows and terracotta panels. A cantilevered terrace is carved out of the structure for the third floor, creating a focal point across the intersection of Stockton and O’Farrell Street.
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Restaurant and building look very nice. Good luck to them! This site was actually part of the City of Paris department store, before it was torn down and rebuilt as Liberty House in 1974. Subsequently the Macy’s Mens Store took it over, and later abandoned it. It looks the best it ever has now.
This building was originally a Liberty House department store. Macy’s acquired it in 1984 and turned it into their men’s store.
The vacancy rate seems more like 50% in Union Square. Have you walked down Powell lately?
They might be including the whole building instead of just the ground level retail. Not sure thou.