Real estate colleagues questioned Justin Palmer’s purchase of a boarded-up, eight-story San Francisco office building for $17.7 million, almost double the price paid for it six years before. Then he told them his plan.
Palmer, cofounder of New York-based builder Synapse Capital, is redeveloping the property into a Yotel, a minimalist hotel brand whose signature feature is tiny rooms, or “cabins,” of about 175 square feet. That means Synapse can fit 202 revenue-producing rooms into a building that would accommodate just 94 were it a standard hotel, he said.
