Joined 16 years ago
Otherwise, it's just theoretical.
Structural steel was adopted quickly once it was clear that it was superior to all other existing construction technologies. The same thing would be true with glue-this and glue-that, if it turned out the be true. It's not. It's the architectural equivalent of vapor-ware.
Sorry Herr Lynn, we are still waiting for your shoe houses.
1. Similar models are popping up all over the city, including the much more sophisticated Panoramic just up a block. Beds starting at $1500. Yes Beds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LI0tqVmGtI
2. They built the Panoramic in the time it took WeLive to do their interior improvements. And when they were working on it, it was just a skeleton crew. The whole time I was thinking ... how are they financing the building? This is insane.
3. WeLive has a main floor common space, where they've had two? events since they opened. Both were modestly attended, but certainly had a college dorm feel to it. Not anything anyone over 30 would be interested in.
4. There appears to be value-added services in the common area, a cafe, a juice bar, etc, but I hardly see it used.
5. They continue to putter around the building, putting a whole new set of scaffolding up, taking it down, putting it up again, doing some painting, taking the taping down, putting it up again, and I wonder ... what on earth are they doing? They had a year to get this right, what's the hold up.
6. Compared to the huge number of apartments going in across the street -- 1900? WeLive is a ghost town.
http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-planners-back...
(ps. the Trinity has major problems going in to this as well. I see it as a huge bungle for the Planners. But I am waiting to see what the Market Street retail looks like. If it's anything like the Mission Street side, it'll keep that side of Market dead.)
So, in short, WeLive is some capital intensive problems, that a lot of smart people are trying to solve, just up the block and across the street, and nothing I see puts WeLive ahead of these guys.
Especially when landlords stop leasing to them at .5x, so that they can turn around and dormify the building and get 2x for it. Not with Panorama and Trinity right there.
At the time when they were looking, I wrote Jerry an open letter about what I thought could be done. Sure I'm a nobody, but none of the ideas were even, through the chances of good business, implemented. Instead there was a fancy rebranding, and a targeting of women's lifestyle channels. And now this.
I'm glad we have a competitive economy, or else I could imagine Yahoo becoming the service that sucked, but that everyone still used.
