The San Francisco Planning Commission voted 7-0 on Nov. 5 to approve the permits Kevin Born needs to open Sanctum Baths, a gay bathhouse at 40 12th St. near Market Street, the Bay Area Reporter reported. Commission President Amy Campbell didn’t need convincing.
“I can’t think of a better and more appropriate location. I know this location very well, as I ride by it every day on my bike,” Campbell said, according to the B.A.R.
Nobody’s booking a room yet. Born still has to hire an architect to oversee the design and buildout, the paper reported, and he told it he’s eyeing a late 2027 opening.
“I am super happy. Number one, because everyone was very supportive,” Born told the B.A.R. shortly after the vote.
Sanctum Baths Clears Its Conditional Use Permit and Window Variance
The commission heard the project as case 2025-004186CUA. The Nov. 5 agenda described a request “to allow conversion of an existing 7,516 gross square-foot two-story non-residential building to Adult Sex Venue Use.”
Staff had recommended the commission “Approve with Conditions.”
The windows got their own fix. Zoning administrator Corey Teague said he’d grant Born a variance so he doesn’t have to meet the city’s fenestration rules for clear windows, the B.A.R. reported. The entrance also stays on 12th Street, not the Stevenson Street alley.
“The redesigned project retains an active storefront while still providing privacy for patrons through use of obscured but translucent glazing, and is consistent with the Urban Design Guidelines,” the planning staff report noted, as quoted by the B.A.R.
Campbell liked that, too. “I like how this is handling the transparency of the ground floor,” she said, per the paper.
Kevin Born Pitched a ‘Health, Wellness and Community Bathhouse’
Born is a general contractor. The building was headquarters for his Ashbury General Contracting & Engineering firm, according to the B.A.R., which describes him as “a straight ally.” He’s also a co-owner of The Midway nightclub in Dogpatch, SFist reported.
His permit submittal reads like a spa brochure. “Sanctum Baths is proposed as a professionally operated health, wellness and community bathhouse serving San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ community,” it said, as quoted by the B.A.R.
He once wanted a cannabis dispensary there. He went public with the project during Pride Month 2025 under the name The Maze, the B.A.R. reported.
Back then, he was blunter. “This isn’t your daddy’s old bathhouse with plywood walls painted black,” Born told the San Francisco Business Times, SFist reported in June 2025. “You’ll feel like you stepped into the Four Seasons Spa.”
The submittal made a neighborly promise. “We are committing to active management of arrivals and departures, occupancy, noise, sidewalk conditions, security and neighborhood communication,” it said, per the B.A.R.
Why San Francisco’s Gay Bathhouses Closed in 1984
In 1984, Department of Public Health rules banned private rooms with locked doors and required staff to monitor patrons, and gay bathhouse owners closed, the B.A.R. reported. Some sex clubs without locked rooms for rent stayed open.
Eros is the holdout. Of those clubs, the B.A.R. reported, “the only one currently open is Eros in the Tenderloin.” Sanctum would be a bathhouse approved under rules the city has rewritten since.
Planning staff took a different view of the venues in 2026. “When safely operated, Adult Sex Venues assist, rather than impede, the city’s efforts to control the transmission of HIV, as well as other sexually transmitted diseases,” the staff report noted, as quoted by the B.A.R.
(Gayety has looked at life on the other side of the towel desk, too, in a bathhouse worker’s TikTok.)
How Rafael Mandelman Rewrote San Francisco’s Bathhouse Rules
Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who represents District 8 and is termed out in early January, did the legislative heavy lifting. He got the health code rules rescinded, then won a 2022 zoning ordinance for the Tenderloin, SoMa and the Castro, the B.A.R. reported.
“So each time we find a new roadblock, we try to clear it away,” Mandelman said in November 2024, SFist reported.
That month, supervisors repealed Police Code Article 26, which dated to 1973, banned locked rooms and required a daily register of patrons. Mandelman’s October 2024 press release announced the repeal bill.
He’s now after a planning code update on fenestration, expected before supervisors later this year, per the B.A.R.
“I am very excited,” Mandelman told the paper.
He wanted a real result. “I am proud we did the work legislatively, but I was going to be very disappointed if it didn’t result in an actual bathhouse opening. I am pleased one entrepreneur figured out how to do this and hoping more will follow,” he said.
Born’s next stop is the architect’s office.
“I am hellbent to move as quickly as I can move,” he told the B.A.R.
