The Cliff House Isn't Reopening This Year. Something Smaller Already Is.

If you walk the Coastal Trail from Sea Cliff toward Eagle Point most mornings, you've probably stopped registering the Cliff House as anything but scenery. It sits at the far end of the loop, boarded up, past Mile Rock Beach and the Sutro Baths ruins, the kind of landmark that's been "reopening soon" for so long it stopped meaning anything. The building closed on December 31, 2020. That puts the current stretch of vacancy at five years and eight months as of this month, long enough that plenty of newer Sea Cliff residents have never seen it operating at all.

Here's the part that hasn't made it into most of the coverage repeating the same "it's coming back" line: the two things people mean when they say "the Cliff House is reopening" are not on the same timeline, and treating them as one story is exactly why this has felt like vapor for half a decade.

Two Timelines, Not One

The building itself, the 29,500-square-foot neoclassical structure at Point Lobos Avenue, needs new elevators, a new HVAC system, a new roof, and enough structural work that current leaseholder Alexander Leff has put the full restoration cost somewhere between $20 million and $25 million, according to reporting from last fall. That figure has more than doubled from the roughly $10 million estimate attached to the project as recently as 2024. Leff, an attorney and San Francisco native who grew up in the Richmond District, has said he expects the whole building operating by late 2026.

That date has moved before. Earlier reporting on this project pointed to 2022, then 2024, then last year. Mary Hountalas, whose family ran the Cliff House for decades before it closed, called the current late-2026 target "very hopeful" when a reporter asked her directly. She would know. It was her restaurant.

But there's a second, much smaller project inside the same lease, and it doesn't need a new roof or new elevators. It's the old gift shop space on the street level, the one nearest the parking lot, and Leff has said he wants a coffee and pastry shop open there by summer 2026. That's a fraction of the square footage and a fraction of the construction. It's also the piece most likely to actually open on schedule, because it isn't waiting on the same permits, contractors, or budget as the dining rooms behind it.

If you've walked past recently and haven't seen a barista in that space yet, that's worth noting for what it tells you about the rest of the project, not as a reason to write off the whole thing.

What Changed Last November

For most of the past five years, the obstacle wasn't just money. It was the name. Dan and Mary Hountalas had held the Cliff House trademarks since the 1980s, and it was genuinely unclear whether Leff would be allowed to call his new restaurant the Cliff House at all. That got resolved in November 2025, when the Hountalas family donated the name, the trademarks, the original recipes, and the sign itself to the Western Neighborhoods Project, a small nonprofit that preserves the history of the city's western neighborhoods.

Nicole Meldahl, the nonprofit's executive director, put it this way when the deal was announced:

"This in perpetuity protects the Cliff House's history and name from whatever business interests are at play or whatever NPS priorities are at play, which the Cliff House has suffered from for a long time."

The practical upshot for anyone walking the trail: the white lettered sign that came down in 2020 is expected to go back up. SFGATE reported the signage could return "relatively soon" after the November deal. That's a physical marker you can actually watch for on a normal walk, separate from whether any restaurant inside is serving food yet.

What's Actually Planned Inside

Leff has said he wants four separate food concepts operating in the building, consulting with Hi Neighbor Hospitality Group, the team behind Trestle, the Vault Steakhouse, and 7 Adams. As of the most recent reporting, that's:

• A family-friendly restaurant with burgers, milkshakes, and outdoor seating on the back patio
• A seafood-focused restaurant
• A coffee and pastry shop in the former gift shop, the piece targeted to open first
• A fourth concept Leff hasn't named yet

There was also a National Park Service commitment, reported last September, that Leff would provide food service "in a limited capacity" by spring 2026. Spring has come and gone by the time you're reading this. Whether that commitment was met is the kind of thing you find out by walking past, not by reading another roundup that just repeats the press release.

It's also worth knowing that Leff's other seaside restaurant ventures haven't all gone smoothly. He holds the master lease for the restaurant at the Huntington Beach municipal pier, where a casual sandwich and seafood spot he briefly ran closed after about a year. That doesn't mean the Cliff House will follow the same path. It does mean the skepticism from people like Mary Hountalas isn't coming from nowhere.

What This Means for Your Next Walk

If you're doing the Sea Cliff to Lands End loop this fall, here's what's realistic to look for, in rough order of how soon you'd plausibly see it:

Construction fencing and scaffolding around the building itself, which outlets reported was expected to start appearing within about a month of the November 2025 trademark announcement. That puts the fencing at close to nine months old by now, so if you haven't clocked it on a recent walk, it's worth a second look next time you pass. A reopened gift shop space, converted into the coffee and pastry concept, which is the piece with the shortest runway and the one to watch for first. The Cliff House sign back on the roofline, which has no firm date attached but was described as a near-term return once the trademark issue cleared. The two full restaurant buildouts (family-friendly and seafood), which are the part actually tied to that $20 to $25 million renovation and the late-2026 target, and the part most likely to slip again given the project's track record.

None of this changes the rest of the walk. Eagle Point Overlook still marks where the Coastal Trail meets Sea Cliff on the east end. The Merrie Way lot and Lands End Lookout Visitor Center still anchor the west end, with the visitor center open Friday through Monday, 9 to 5, for anyone who wants a map or a bathroom before the final stretch. The Sutro Baths ruins are still down the short spur trail below the parking lot, tide pools and all, regardless of what's happening forty feet up the hill at the restaurant site.

What's different is that for the first time since 2020, there's an actual sequence to watch instead of a single date to keep not believing. The building reopening late 2026 is still, by its own operator's account, "hopeful." The coffee shop opening this year is a much smaller bet, made by a much smaller renovation, and it's the one piece of this story that will tell you something real before the rest of it does.

If you're keeping an eye on how Sea Cliff is changing this year, whether it's a landmark restaurant finally coming back to life or the quieter shifts on the streets around it, that kind of local read is exactly what Michelle Pender built her practice on. If you'd ever like to talk through what any of it means for a property in the neighborhood, request a private consultation any time.