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.

According to the current leaseholder, the Cliff House will reopen next year  — but that is looking increasingly unlikely. Reviving the landmark, which is owned by the National Park Service, could be among San Francisco’s most expensive restaurant ventures, overseen by an operator with a mixed record.

It’s easy to see what five years of neglect can do to a landmark. 

Today, the entire banks of windows on the lower and street levels of the Cliff House are boarded up. Vandals have thrown rocks through the windows that remain accessible higher up, cracks spiderweb across the crumbling facade, and rust peppers exposed metal fixtures and doors.

Visited by five presidents, including Theodore Roosevelt and Ulysses S. Grant, the Cliff House is in an ignominious state for what was once a beloved — albeit middling — restaurant buttressed by some of the best damn views in the West. 

The sorry exterior hints at deeper issues within.

Alexander Leff, the operator selected by the National Park Service in 2023 to reopen the Cliff House as a restaurant, told The Standard that the cost to restore the landmark has ballooned from a projected $10 million last year to $25 million. The elevators need to be replaced, the roof leaks, the electrical wiring needs an overhaul, and the $1 million HVAC system, installed in 2020, has been destroyed beyond repair by the corrosive salt air. 

“It was much more than me or the Park Service anticipated,” he said.

Leff’s expanding ambition is partly responsible for the exorbitant reopening cost. He now hopes to have three restaurants and a cafe inside — up from three food operations just last year — along with a San Francisco-themed gift shop. The additional restaurant will require renovating the lower level, once home to the nickel arcade Musee Mecanique.

Reopening the Cliff House has been a moving target. Leff had predicted it would be open for business by 2024, then 2025, and now hopes for the end of 2026, starting with the cafe on the street level, which he expects to debut in the summer. Cafe patrons could sip coffee and tea and munch on pastries with deck seating and views of the ocean and Sutro Bath ruins. The Cliff House’s other two decks would also be renovated with restaurant seating, along with heaters and wind and rain protection. This year, Leff started interior demolition, waterproofing, and reroofing.

None of the tenants that would operate the cafe or restaurants have been selected, but they will not be chains, he said.

“We want to have a mix of things to attract locals, not just rip off tourists,” Leff said. “We want things casual and family-oriented. People will come on the weekend with their families, walk on the beach, go to the Legion of Honor, bike through Golden Gate Park.”

One reason Leff won the contract to occupy the Cliff House was his record as a concessionaire at piers in Malibu, Oceanside, and Huntington Beach. Those projects didn’t always meet the expectations set at the start.

He signed a contract for the Malibu pier in 2004. Two years later, state officials notified Leff that he was in breach of contract as a concessionaire for failing to timely pay penalties on two late rent payments in 2006 and failing to submit construction documents on time, among other issues. 

The first phase of the pier’s reopening came in 2008, four years after Leff signed the contract. 

Jefferson Wagner, a two-time mayor of Malibu who was Leff’s partner in the enterprise, said the restaurant and gift shop at the end of the pier have been closed since January. The California Department of Parks and Recreation had to close the seaward side of the pier that month after it discovered structural issues. The gift shop and restaurant on the landward side remain open, Leff said. The contract with state officials expired this year. 

Wagner said he doesn’t plan to bid again with Leff. Instead, he’s looking for new partners. 

“I’ve reached out to several investors of higher scale and financial means than my previous partner, Alex,” said Wagner, who described the end of the business relationship as “amicable.”

“I felt it was more advantageous to have someone right here on the site to help manage it,” Wagner added. “Every three to six months he would make a visit down. It definitely was not monthly or weekly.”

Leff confirmed that California State Parks had notified him of the contract breach in Malibu but said the violations were “insignificant,” amounting to a little more than $100, and were repaid promptly.

“We’ve paid the Park Service millions and millions of dollars for the Malibu pier, and this was $113.17,” he said.

On the Oceanside pier, a company owned by Leff has a lease for a kiosk and a connected two-story restaurant that runs through 2033. In April 2024, an accidental fire destroyed the structures and a portion of the pier. 

Leff’s company is responsible for the complex permitting and entitlement process, which involves the California Coastal Commission, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, state and federal Fish and Wildlife departments, and the State Water Resources Control Board. 

Leff said he is working with the city of Oceanside to design a new pier, but it is “several years away from reopening.” At the very earliest, construction could start by the end of 2026.  

Meanwhile, in Huntington Beach, he is the master leaseholder for the restaurant at the end of the municipal pier and briefly owned a casual sandwich and seafood restaurant, Bud & Gene’s, at the location that closed a year later.

A location of Broad Street Oyster Company opened at the site in 2023, but Keith Bohr, a co-owner of the neighboring Huntington’s by the Pier, is skeptical that it will be a success. 

“We’re for more restaurants on the pier —  it’s an ‘all boats rise’ sort of thing,” Bohr said. “But as I’ve heard from many pier strollers, it’s conceptually wrong, in that it’s an order-at-the-counter type service and yet still higher-end and pricey, as if it’s full-service.”

Bohr said a city official had suggested he consider partnering with Leff. But news of Leff’s lawsuits with tenants and contractors and conversations with his former business partners convinced Bohr otherwise.

“My understanding is he’s a litigant attorney and has not been a restaurant operator,” Bohr said. “He acts as the intermediary landlord and hopes to make money on the spread of what he pays the city and his sublease pays him.”

Leff said in response that he owns multiple restaurants, including the ones at the Huntington Beach pier and Malibu pier.

Investment banker Alexander Unger, who said he has dined at the Cliff House half a dozen times over the years, recalled that by 2019, the food and service had markedly declined.

But, he noted, it was never really about what was on the plate. “It became kind of a tourist trap,” he said. “People weren’t coming to eat there anymore; they were coming for the view.” 

David Barzelay, chef-owner of Michelin-starred Lazy Bear, was hoping to create a dining experience that matched the vista. He answered an initial interest call from federal park officials to become the Cliff House’s steward, which led to a tour with other interested parties. 

“One of the issues with San Francisco is there aren’t very many spaces that are big and grand, or even have the capacity to be grand,” Barzelay said. “To me, the thing about the Cliff House is when somebody is visiting the city and they’ve got one night to dine out, and they want to eat at the most iconic San Francisco restaurant, the answer should be, ‘Oh, you gotta go to the Cliff House.’”

To Barzelay, the location and history of the property could be a source of civic and culinary pride. But that was before he took a closer look inside and worked out the numbers. 

The property has a base monthly rent of around $37,000, according to Barzelay, a relative bargain for the size. Where the problem lies is in the percentage of revenue as rent taken by the federal government, which scales up as sales increase.  

Barzelay wanted to create an upscale experience in line with his fine-dining pedigree and estimated that renovations would cost up to $20 million. The promise would be to massively juice revenue, but he figured if his plans were a success, he could be on the hook for as much as $2 million in annual rent. 

“They wanted an operator that would come in and not change much and do basically the same crappy thing they didn’t have to worry about,” Barzelay said. “But that’s a very short-term way of looking at it, despite it being a very long-term lease.”

Although some of the infrastructure had been recently updated, the quality of the materials and the work was poor, according to Barzelay. There seemed to be a limited appetite from the National Park Service to improve those conditions. 

What’s more, upkeep for a building constantly being blasted by sand and salt means frequent and expensive replacement of basic fixtures like door locks and handles. Dan and Mary Hountalas, who operated the Cliff House before Leff, from 1974 to 2020, estimated they spent $250,000 annually on building maintenance due to the corrosive environment.

“I hate to say this, but honestly, the best thing that could happen to it would be for it to burn down again, so it could be rebuilt in a better way,” Barzelay joked. He decided not to submit a bid for the project.

Leff brought on Hi Neighbor Hospitality Group, which operates six Bay Area restaurants, as a consultant with the idea to design a new version of the Cliff House, segmenting the space into venues occupied by various local brands. 

It’s a strategy meant to bring in a wider array of visitors and spread out some of the financial risk. Among those asked by Hi Neighbor if they would like to occupy a portion of the Cliff House were the owners of dim sum restaurants Koi Palace and Palette Tea House. A source close to the matter said they turned down the offer. 

Hi Neighbor CEO Ryan Cole declined to comment on the company’s involvement or provide an update on attracting tenants to the project. 

One of the sad ironies of the Cliff House is that even if everything goes according to plan — if Leff can muster the funding and overcome the bureaucratic obstacles to reopen under the new schedule — he might not be able to use the historic name.  

The Hountalases, who operated the restaurant for more than four decades, hold the trademarks to the Cliff House, meaning a deal would have to be worked out for Leff to use the name by which the property has been known since the 1860s.

Leff said discussions with the couple are ongoing, but Mary Hountalas says otherwise. “As far as negotiations, there haven’t been any recently,” she said. “He always seems to be traveling or out of the country.” 

Leff said he spoke with the couple’s attorney last month but has never spoken directly to Mary.

Mary Hountalas declined to share the exact amount it would cost Leff to license or buy the trademark, but she previously told the Chronicle that her family had “spent seven figures” to protect the name over the years. 

For now, the only way to have any official Cliff House experience is to visit the couple’s Cliff House-branded food truck in the Financial District or purchase a crop top or bucket hat plastered with the landmark’s ’90s logo.

Hountalas said the Cliff House was in “good condition” when she and Dan left in 2020, but park officials had let it erode before Leff assumed the lease. She doubts anything will open there anytime soon, calling his 2026 reopening date “very hopeful.”

“It was our lives. We hate to see what’s happened to it. It’s not Mr. Leff’s fault; if anyone is to be blamed, it’s the Park Service. They never took care of it,” she said. “By the time he got the lease, the place had badly deteriorated.”

The National Parks Service said that at the end of the Hountalas’ tenure, the building needed a “significant amount of maintenance” due to harsh coastal weather. Leff is paying rent and has committed to provide food services “in a limited capacity” by this spring, a parks service spokesperson added.

Leff says he empathizes with the frustration about delays and the extended closure. The Cliff House’s iconic nature is part of the reason he decided to take on the burden of resurrecting it himself.

“It’s a remarkable building, with a beautiful remodel. I think we’ll create memories for more people,” Leff said. “All we have to do is not screw it up.”