What Do You Wish Were Here? Empty Lot at Telegraph and Haste

The Berkeley Inn was built in 1911 by famed San Francisco architect Joseph Cather Newsom (1858-1930), an ancestor of former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. It offered around 75 rooms and a large restaurant that also served as a ballroom, attracting high calibre guests with its elegant architecture and heart-of-Berkeley luxury. 

But by 1940, the restaurant had closed down and the Berkeley Inn was headed for an unending era of bad luck. A number of fires eventually resulted in the hotel's demolition in 1990, just three years after the Berkeley Inn was designated a historical landmark. 

In 1994, the now empty lot where the Berkeley Inn had previously stood was bought by Ken Sarachan, owner of a number of Berkeley establishments, including and . The lot remains empty today after years of back-and-forth on potential projects without any solid progress. Sarachan blames "the Planning Departments’ lack of competence" for delays to redevelopment. 

Now, the City of Berkeley has filed for "non judicial foreclosure" on the lot, which means that if Sarachan does not pay off liens on the property, the site will be auctioned off for others to make an attempt at reviving the now 21-year-old, overgrown and littered lot.

Ideas are already cropping up for the vacant space. Students from UC Berkeley’s Department of Architecture have created a number of proposals, detailed here on Berkeleyside, including building an Urban Ecology Center and providing a home for the Institute for Anarchic Studies and the AK Press. 

What do you wish were here? Share your hopes for the vacant lot on the corner of Telegraph and Haste by commenting below.

Read more about the Berkeley Inn in Tom Slattery's essay on the history of the hotel as told through witness accounts.