On an unseasonably warm September afternoon, home care worker Aisha Mitchell traveled from San Mateo to the Outer Richmond to listen to the waves crashing on the shore. As a waitress at the Denny’s in Japantown in the early 2000s, she’d come to this exact spot — the Cliff House — to admire the sea.
“This was the best part of San Francisco,” she said. “This place always brings me back.”
But since 2020, the Cliff House, a 29,500-square-foot neoclassical behemoth built in 1909 after fires destroyed two previous buildings, has sat vacant. And it’s not looking like that will change anytime soon…