Seattle independent radio station KEXP is exploring the possibility of building out a second physical home — far from its beloved base at Seattle Center — in San Francisco.
Three years after expanding its broadcast footprint to the Bay Area with the acquisition of 92.7 KREV FM, the non-profit music institution has set its sights on the city’s historic Haight-Ashbury neighborhood for a potential site.
Under a proposed partnership announced Thursday by KEXP and city preservation group SF Heritage, the station would team up with local nonprofit Blue Bear School of Music to convert the historic Doolan-Larson House and Storefronts at the corner of Haight and Ashbury streets into a multifaceted music and cultural center.
The early-stage plan for the landmark property envisions radio broadcast facilities, a roof venue for live performances and community events, space for group and individual music lessons, and a public “third space” intended for year-round daily gathering.
The proposed hub adds another twist to the long-standing cross-pollination between the two tech capitals. While Silicon Valley giants have routinely set up major engineering outposts in Seattle, and founders and workers migrate between the regions, KEXP’s expansion represents a rare cultural export heading in the opposite direction.
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie cheered the proposal as a win for both the neighborhood and the city’s broader economic recovery.
“Art and music have been part of what makes San Francisco special for generations,” Lurie said in a statement. “Innovative partnerships like this one help us reimagine what’s possible and find new ways to activate our neighborhoods. Our artists and cultural spaces make our city stronger, and this new home for music and culture at Haight and Ashbury will inspire generations to come.”
Located at the epicenter of the 1960s counterculture movement, the Colonial Revival-style Doolan-Larson House was originally constructed in 1903 and raised after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake to add ground-floor storefronts.
The property — designated San Francisco Landmark No. 253 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places — housed groundbreaking hippie-era boutiques during the Summer of Love. It was gifted to SF Heritage in 2017 by its long-time owner, the late Norman Larson, specifically to ensure the landmark would be preserved and activated for public and cultural use.
Founded in 1972 as KCMU — a small, student-run station at the University of Washington — KEXP has spent over five decades building a global reputation for human-curated music discovery, famously becoming one of the first stations to champion the “Seattle sound” in the late 1980s.
The station’s Bay Area presence officially materialized in late 2023 when KEXP placed the winning $3.75 million bid at a bankruptcy auction to acquire commercial frequency 92.7 KREV FM (now KEXC). Funded by a portion of a $10 million bequest left by a anonymous long-time donor, the station began retransmitting its broadcast signal to Northern California in March 2024 as part of a strategy to ground its growing digital and streaming audience in key cultural markets.
In Seattle, KEXP’s physical hub at Seattle Center — itself a civic landmark — features a public Gathering Space that combines a coffee shop, record store, and live performance venue alongside its open-view DJ booth.
Translating a high-touch, human-centered physical experience into new markets is a core priority for the station: KEXP recently hired its first chief product and technology officer, former SiriusXM and Nordstrom executive Jyoti Shukla, to build digital products and physical spaces that intentionally prioritize human music curation over AI algorithms.
In a post on LinkedIn, KEXP CEO Ethan Raup said the response to the station’s arrival in the Bay Area “has been nothing short of remarkable” and that it gave KEXP “the confidence to start planning for our next big step.”
In its post on Thursday, KEXP stressed the plans are “not a done deal yet.” Over the coming months, SF Heritage, KEXP, and Blue Bear School of Music will focus on gathering community feedback, finalizing an adaptive reuse plan, and determining construction feasibility and project financing.
KEXP and Blue Bear representatives will make their first public outreach push at the Haight Ashbury Street Fair on Sunday to share more about the proposed project.
