News: Vote on future of SF Palace Hotel’s neon lights delayed
Andrea Jesse
- By James Salazar | Examiner staff writer
- May 2, 2024
The two neon signs roosted atop San Francisco’s Palace Hotel will stay dark for another month while preservationists and hotel management attempt to hammer out a compromise on a proposed restoration project.
The San Francisco Historic Preservation Commission delayed its vote on whether to approve a conversion of the signs’ dormant neon lights to LED ones for a fourth time Wednesday, pushing their vote back to the commission’s June 5 meeting.
Palace Hotel management and San Francisco Neon, the group advocating for a full restoration of the signs, met Wednesday morning with Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin to “really talk about the nuance and the detail of neon vs LED,” San Francisco Neon's Randall Ann Homan said.
While both sides said they were in favor of pushing the vote to next month, Homan said San Francisco Neon would have also been content with a vote during Wednesday’s meeting.
“President Peskin did convene a meeting with all parties and is hopeful that they can come to a universal resolution that will preserve this historic and iconic city landmark,” Sunny Angulo, a legislative aide to Peskin, told The Examiner in a statement.
James Tyler, the Palace Hotel’s director of engineering, said the hotel has been “working to strike a balance between the cost of illuminating the sign or delaying any project till the hotel is in a better financial position.”
“It’s important for the commission to understand that the cost of lighting the two signs goes far beyond the initial installation,” he said during Wednesday’s meeting. “The true expense is ongoing maintenance costs.”
Permits filed with the Department of Building Inspection assessed the cost of the LED conversion at roughly $153,376.
Homan said that the hotel was in a “very wonderful position” to do a full restoration of the signs, as the old neon lights have already been taken off. The hotel’s maintenance costs ballooned, she said, because crews had been patching up issues as they popped up.
“These signs are not dysfunctional,” she said. “They just have deferred maintenance, and a full restoration at this time would be a bonus to the Palace Hotel — to their branding, but particularly to San Francisco and this iconic sign.”
Homan said that San Francisco Neon has offered free consultations to Palace Hotel management as part of the proposal.
“We really believe these signs should be neon,” she said.
Tyler said that the ultimate goal is a project that is “feasible for the hotel and hopefully supported by our neighbors and friends in the community.”
If the sides are unable to reach an agreement before next month, a majority of the body’s seven commissioners would have to approve the switch to LED lights. Palace Hotel management have committed to memorialize the lights in their hotel lobby’s museum, which commemorates significant objects and artifacts throughout the property’s 150-year history.
