San Francisco’s iconic Cliff Home house to reopen with new restaurant in 2022
Eight months after the Cliff House was finally closed and the signage removed from the historic room, the National Park Service announced its next plan for the building: the installation of a new restaurant by the end of 2022.
Valet parking announced Tuesday that it is canceling its application for qualifications for potential tenants for 2019 and is instead moving to a call for proposals for those interested in taking over the restaurant space.
The announcement comes as a relief to many after a widespread rumor spread that the 157-year-old room would be converted into an office building after the Cliff House closed in December 2020. The National Park Service, which owns the building, said it did not last year, but the announcement of a search for a new restaurant owner on Tuesday should put an end to that rumor.
In its announcement, Valet Parking set its schedule for the establishment of a new restaurant in the Cliff House building. The proposal process is slated for later this year, and if all goes well, the valet service expects a final selection by mid-2022 with a long-term lease from late 2022.
Park Service is also looking for someone to rent the space in the former Louis’ restaurant, the group confirmed to the San Francisco Chronicle. (SFGATE and the San Francisco Chronicle are both owned by Hearst, but operate independently.)
The Park Service did not specify the length of the new lease in its press release, but the lease negotiations were partly behind the closure of the Cliff House when it was run under Dan and Mary Hountalas. The Hountalases have operated the Cliff House since 1973, and when the previous 20-year concession expired in 2018, they were relocated to short-term concessions.
During the pandemic, the Hountalases offered brief to-go services for 10 weeks before deciding to temporarily close the restaurant in July. They later turned down an offer from Park Service for a three and a half year lease, ending the Hountalas era of the Cliff House.
The building’s new concessionaire will not only have plenty of space to fill, but will also face the difficult task of finding a new name for the building and restaurant – the Hountalases have entered the name Cliff House, which is why the Cliff House sign has been removed when the restaurant closed.
Fiona Lee, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of SFGATE, contributed to this report.
