Sullivan's Funeral Home at 2254 Market Street is slated to undergo major redevelopment, with Socketsite reporting that three additional floors are planned for above the funeral home business, plus two new buildings in the adjacent parking lot.
[Update: As some readers have noted, the developer plan submission is an initial step towards building on the property. The plan will still need to go through an extensive review process and may change substantially, or not happen at all.]
According to plans filed by The Prado Group, the buildings in the adjacent parking lot will include a 50-foot building facing Market Street and a 40-foot building facing 15th Street. Plans state that the Market Street facing properties will be interconnected and contain 45 dwelling units, 13,550 square feet of ground floor retail space, and a 22-car parking garage underneath the building.
The plans to add three additional floors to Sullivan's current two-story building are vague, but as Socket Site notes, it seems unlikely that Sullivan's will remain in the space.
Organizers of the Preserving LGBT Historic Sites in California Facebook page argue that the building, erected in 1924, should be preserved because of the part the funeral home played during the AIDS crisis:
When AIDS swept the Castro, countless services for gay men were held at Sullivan's. In the early years of the epidemic, many mortuaries refused the bodies of those who had died of AIDS. According to a June 2006 AIDS timeline in the San Jose Mercury News, Sullivan's was a notable exception: Owner Jim Sullivan "lost a brother to AIDS, and his funeral home was one of the few in the city that would handle the funerals of AIDS victims."
The Planning Department has the building marked as a "potential historic resource," but it's not clear whether they are actively investigating the possible designation. We'll be sure to keep a close eye on this one and update you as details come to light.
