Oct. 15--The dark blue granite floors in the restaurant gleamed and huge vases filled with 100 perfect calla lilies dominated the fifth-floor lobby as the first guests checked into their $400 rooms at the new Four Seasons Hotel. Along with Italian marble bathrooms, down duvets and all-night room service, the pampered clientele looked forward to a choice of 40 activities at the 100,000-square-foot health club downstairs. 

The debut of this luxury hotel on San Francisco's Market Street earlier this month, and its sumptuous upstairs condominiums, represent a milestone in the controversial 40-year effort to convert one of the city's most blighted quarters into a stylish, eclectic destination for art lovers, tourists, shoppers and residents, from low-income seniors to the wealthy. 

Even those who opposed the city's heavy-handed relocation of poor residents nearly four decades ago say the completion of the Yerba Buena Redevelopment Plan will signal a remarkable urban transformation, one that is studied and copied by planners from around the world. It already has changed the way San Franciscans and visitors experience the city. 

The Four Seasons, and an adjacent pedestrian lane lined with chic retailers due to open in spring, are meant to serve as a bridge between Union Square, the city's traditional shopping, entertainment and tourist center, and the Yerba Buena redevelopment area south of Market Street, known as SoMa. The hotel's developers say the complex will bring high-end shops and gracious living to a part of the city not known for luxury. 

"I think it's broadened and enriched downtown San Francisco," said Bill Carney, project manager for the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency. "People are attracted to the vitality that's been created South of Market, including a retail and hotel commercial development, but also including wonderful open space and cultural attractions." 

The Four Seasons sits at the edge of a district that includes the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, smaller galleries and theaters, the Sony Metreon entertainment complex, Yerba Buena Gardens and the Moscone Convention Center. 

And there's more to come. Behind the Four Seasons, on Jessie Street, a historic Pacific Gas & Electric substation is under renovation for the future Jewish Museum San Francisco. Across a broad plaza to be called Jessie Square, the new Mexican Museum will be built. And a third museum, the African American Cultural Center, will occupy a floor of yet another luxury hotel-condo tower, the St. Regis, next door to the Museum of Modern Art. 

It was this intensely urban backdrop, not to mention the Four Seasons' five-star amenities, that appealed to Chris Greer, a 33-year-old investment banker who will close on a three-bedroom condo later this month. 

"As far as the West Coast goes, it gives you a lot of action. I grew up in L.A. and lived in New York," Greer said. He looks forward to the hotel's in-house catering, concierge and housekeeping services, as well as membership in the cushy Sports Club/L.A. Residents of the tower have their own elevator access to the health club. Then there are the sweeping views of Twin Peaks, the Marin Headlands, Alcatraz and the Bay Bridge outside Greer's high-rise windows. 

"It's not only a wonderful blend of modern convenience and location," Greer said, "it's a great investment." 

Until the 1960s, the neighborhood between Folsom and Market and Third and Fourth streets was home to dozens of down-at-the-heels residential hotels, saloons, warehouses and even a meat rendering plant. It was known as San Francisco's "skid row," resembling the Tenderloin district of today. Most of its residents were retirees, often tradesmen, living on pensions and Social Security. 

Redevelopment began as a classic urban renewal effort. City officials envisioned office buildings, hotels, a convention center and a sports complex. But thousands of low-income renters lost their homes and tenants groups sued the city for failing to provide adequate replacement housing. The project stalled. In 1973, a settlement was reached that required affordable senior housing to be built in the same neighborhood. 

Construction of Moscone Convention Center finally got under way and over the next two decades, other public and private projects followed: the Museum of Modern Art, Yerba Buena Art Center and gardens, a children's play area, the Metreon, and the promised apartments for seniors. 

In 30 years, 3,000 new housing units have been built in the Yerba Buena area, said John Elberling, executive director of the Tenants and Owners Development Corp., which builds and operates low-income housing. Of those, 1,462 are designated for seniors. 

"There really is a very good low-income senior community living here," he said. "Basically, a new long-term community replaced the one that was pushed out by the bulldozers. It took an awful lot of confrontational politics to do that. This didn't happen easily." 

Now, the neighborhood is eagerly awaiting another opening. The redevelopment agency is considering a proposal for the first grocery store South of Market in many decades. At Fourth and Harrison streets, the developer of an apartment building proposes a Whole Foods market for the ground floor. Elberling said the company would offer low-price coupons and home delivery to elderly neighbors. 

"From our point of view, this is much more important than the Four Seasons," he said. "It's really crucial for the neighborhood." 

Even as SoMa development was being spurred by the dot-com renaissance in the late 1990s, Market Street remained a line of demarcation between the city's traditional center to the north and a funkier emerging neighborhood to the south. 

That line is now gone, promoters of the new Four Seasons Residences maintain. Wealthy buyers are paying $1 million to $14 million for units that occupy the top 20 floors of the hotel tower. Of 140 condominiums, only 24 are unsold. The owners include a couple from Orinda who plan to visit their pied-a(gra)-terre from Sunday to Tuesday, a woman who bought three adjacent units for herself and her daughters and a Hong Kong businessman who plans to live there 30 days a year. 

Sales seem unhampered by the economic downturn, said Diana Nelson, manager of residential services. "The people in this building are already established." 

Even so, it wasn't long ago that paying several million dollars for a home -- or spending $900 for one night in a hotel suite on Market Street -- would have been unthinkable. 

"Five years ago you could not have conceived of a five-star hotel on Market Street," said Anita Hill, executive director of the Yerba Buena Alliance, a business and neighborhood group. "It's just an amazing transformation, and it's still happening." 

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