AGI Capital

Got Capped

Posted by AGI on January 14, 2007 11:06 AM | Permalink

One would never know it just looking, but we poured our roof deck at the SomaGrand last week to some celebration at AGI at our "Topping-off" event. Unlike a circus act, where an acrobat spinning plates slowly inserts and climbs a tower of precariously balanced chairs, with the audience bursting into applause when the last chair is inserted and plates still spinning, there is almost no visceral tension in the events leading to the topping-off, and it's nearly always a guaranteed event. Nevertheless, getting here is quite a balancing act, precarious at moments, leading to a definite sigh of relief.

Despite what the term might imply, it is not even the penultimate event. The term unlike others - crowning achievement, or reaching the summit - is handed out at a time when the project is far from complete; most of the guts and half the skin still need to be constructed. However, there must be someplace deep in the base of the human psyche, where reaching and finishing the top-most piece of a structure, whether it's a lego tower or this, evokes a unique sense accomplishment and satisfaction.

At the event of course there was a fair amount of backslapping and glad-handing, but for many in the industry, including many of the attendees, I guess for them it was.....big whoops - Infinity, Rincon, Millennium, the Intercontinental are all going 50+ stories, hell they're even talking about a 120 story behemoth; what's our little 240 foot 22 story tower - a sapling among trees. Well, for one it's our first high-rise, it's our first anything near this size, everything else we built Tony Hawk could probably ollie off-of (well at least into a pool). And, its also coming together with our partners TMG, and Joie de Vivre Hospitality, making it a deeply local and uniquely all San Francisco project.....wait until you see the 60 foot all glass art wall.

In any case, get ready, the tower is done, the building will be open in October and we decided that we are going to bookend this accomplishment by starting a 9-month long party between now and then - and we are welcoming others interested in San Francisco life and style to participate in the ride. Register through the website and look out for our weekly SomaGrand Salons, where we will be launching an intriguing set of industry parties as we go from this topping-off, with a fair amount of cork-popping, to the first SomaGrand'ers entering their doors.