Golden Gateway Re-Brands As Embarcadero SquareEmbarcadero Square and Golden Gateway Commons. Photos: Geri Koeppel/Hoodline
Geri Koeppel
Published on September 07, 2015

Changes are underway in the Gateway neighborhood, as the commercial space formerly under the umbrella name of Golden Gateway Commons has re-branded as Embarcadero Square. It's located roughly between Broadway and Jackson Street and from Front Street to the Embarcadero. It hugs Sydney Walton Square.


New signs went up with the new name on various pillars of the brick complex in late August, to the surprise of the homeowners upstairs. A spokesperson told Hoodline that Gaw Capital Partners bought the complex in December 2014—ground-floor commercial spaces only; the top three levels are still Golden Gateway Commons condos. It's being managed by Downtown Properties, which has a portfolio that includes 300 Montgomery St. and 333 Market St. in the FiDi, along with hotels, lofts and other office buildings from New York to Los Angeles.


Embarcadero Square, built in the 1980s, has about 295,000 square feet of commercial space and is currently seeking more tenants. The management will meet with residents on preliminary ideas for increasing foot traffic and making the exterior spaces more appealing. One of the first steps was to contract People in Plazas, a local nonprofit that provides lunchtime public concerts, to perform in Sydney Walton Square.

Golden Gateway Commons condo resident Carol Parlette said the influx of offices at Embarcadero Square and beyond that has changed the neighborhood character. "It’s colder to see an office where you can’t open the door and can’t go in rather than a restaurant where you can smell food and maybe partake," Parlette said. She added, "I wish the commercial people had some incentive to make it more retail, rather than get all the bucks they can get, but that’s not the way the world works."

Offices along Pacific Mall on Sydney Walton Square.

Many of the spaces at Embarcadero Square and in the area in general have changed uses over time. Neighbor Rose Pan recalled a small restaurant that served beer, wine and oysters, and neighbor Sy Aal said a place called Swiss Italia was on the corner of Jackson and Davis streets, and where the Chase Bank ATM is on Jackson south of Front used to be a tennis shop, then a flower shop.

Parlette and Aal fondly recalled the restaurant MacArthur Park, 607 Front St., which was known for its ribs. Hooch Davanloo, who used to own Contempo Gateway salon in the former Golden Gateway Commons, misses it, too. "This restaurant had excellent happy hours," he said. "You walk by there after five o’ clock these days, it’s dead." (Davanloo now styles hair out of Peninsula Beauty in 4 Embarcadero Center.)

Davanloo said it was common to see people in front of Ciao, which occupied part of the space Kokkari is in, spilling out to the sidewalk sipping wine and smoking cigarettes. Davanloo, Parlette and Aal also mentioned Square One, by chef/owner Joyce Goldstein, which closed July 4, 1996. "It was one of the most elite restaurants in the city," Parlette said.

Instead, now the buildings along Front Street north of Jackson Street house the Koret Foundation, Institutional Venture Partners and other offices. Kokkari, of course, is still a big draw, but some balk at the prices and long waits. Davanloo said the area has a lot of high-end places and fast food, but not many options in between. Aal added she'd like to see mid-priced food options in the immediate area, too.

Front Street north of Jackson Street.

The neighbors also said a lot of retail has left: Sharper Image used to be at 650 Davis St., now an Esurance office. Pan said there was a small gym, a stationary store named Jacqui Paper and a tailor. Davanloo remembered a drug store at 201 Jackson St. where the ARC Document Solutions print shop is now. (To be fair, the Gateway Apartments commercial spaces still house a fair amount of neighborhood-serving businesses, including Starbucks, Safeway, Glamour Nail Salon, Cafe Insalata, Baskin-Robbins, Togo's and the Eureka Theater playhouse, which used to be a movie theater, Davanloo said.)


But all of them miss a high-end hardware and housewares shop called Forest Jones that used to be in a space near what is now Safeway. "It was a great store for all the apartments here requiring goods and especially for seniors who didn't drive," Pan said. Safeway, in turn, used to be a more boutique grocery called Bon Appetit. "A lot of people liked that because it wasn’t just mass production," Davanloo said. Aal said there was a liquor store next to the Safeway that moved out, so Safeway then expanded.

Davis Cleaners

Coffee Roaster

A few retail and service businesses remain at Embarcadero, including Davis Cleaners, Golden Gateway Optometry and Coffee Roaster, a coffee shop run for about three decades by Lana Yelnin, who has a propensity for calling her customers "sweetheart" or "sweetie." Parlette said jokingly, "If Lana goes, we should all get up in arms. That would be the last straw."