As the elevator doors slid open, I came to a place I’d never explored: the semi-secret upper floor of The Metreon — the floor above the movie theaters, a private event space known as The Aviary (formerly City View).
Last month I wrote about the “backrooms” of the Metreon’s movie theater on the third floor. Recently I got an invite to Google’s Startup Week, which was hosted on the fourth floor. As the name suggests, this was squarely aimed at the tech crowd. I was ostensibly there to see Google X’s Astro Teller, an old guard Silicon Valley visionary. That talk did not disappoint.
But my hidden motive was to explore the only space in the Metreon I’d never been to. Well, except for that one time they forgot to lock the elevator and I wound up there by mistake (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it).
The interior of the upper floors is mostly a blank floor plate with a boring white side hall where the bathrooms are located. There’s also a food prep area back there somewhere.
More interesting, though, is the balcony. Perched above Yerba Buena Gardens, you can see Moscone Center to the south, and SFMOMA straight ahead. It’s a pleasant balcony. Without the tech crowd flooding the space, one could imagine nesting somewhere like this in an upscale apartment or hotel.
What surprised me the most were the original escalators — still intact — branching down past a subfloor to the movie theater below. This lost part of the building is hiding in plain sight, rarely (if ever?) used, dating all the way back to the Metreon’s opening day in 1999.
As a side note, there is technically a subfloor above the Aviary level; however, I don’t know how to access it — it’s for staff only, from what a little bird tells me. Perhaps I’ll find a way to explore that in the future.
Next stop… the roof?
