A new gay bathhouse that we first learned about last year, headed for 12th Street in SoMa, has been given a name, and city planners have recommended it for approval, with final approval by the Planning Commission likely to come Thursday.Sanctum Baths, once it opens, will be the first new gay bathhou se in SF's SoMa district since the AIDS crisis led to the forced closure of bathhouses that once dotted the city — but which were concentrated around SoMa.The owner behind it is Kevin Born, a co-owner of The Midway nightclub in Dogpatch, who also owns a general contracting business that had been headquartered in the building he is converting into the bathhouse. As SFist reported in June 2025, it's a two-story building just off Market Street at 40 12th Street, just a few blocks from gay bars like the SF Eagle, The Powerhouse, and the Lone Star Saloon. Born had initially talked about naming it Maze SF, but that name didn't quite fit with his description of his plans for "the Four Seasons of bathhouses," and after working with a marketing consultant he has settled on Sanctum Baths.As the Bay Area Reporter tells us this week, the SF Planning Department has recommended the bathhouse for approval, and it will be on the docket at Thursday's meeting of the Planning Commission.Born says that there were delays in getting a hearing date for the project, and he now hopes to have Sanctum Baths open by late fall 2027.Born told the SF Business Times last year that the place would be "unapologetically queer" but upscale, adding, "This isn’t your daddy’s old bathhouse with plywood walls painted black. You’ll feel like you stepped into the Four Seasons Spa."And as he told the BAR this week, "I haven’t retained an architectural firm yet. I am hoping in the next six to seven months we should have all the permits we need then can get right into the buildout."Along with a host of gay bars that once existed in many neighborhoods around the city besides SoMa and the Castro, sex-positive bathhouses were a central part of gay nightlife in the 1970s and early 1980s. Ads from the time detail bathhouses that catered to various tastes, with the preppier Ritch Street baths catering to a different clientele than the more leathery Club Baths at 8th and Howard, for example.An ordinance passed under Mayor Dianne Feinstein in 1984 outlawed bathhouses with private rooms that had closed doors — these rooms were typically rented by guests for the purpose of having anonymous sex. The law also required bathhouse employees to monitor patrons' sexual activity, and as the BAR notes, this served to shut down the entire industry in a short span of time.Eros, a sex club and bathhouse without private rooms, managed to last through the 1990s and 2000s on Market Street near the Castro, but relocated to a new space in the Tenderloin, the former Bulldog Baths, in 2022.Supervisor Rafael Mandelman sought to bring bathhouse culture back to San Francisco six years ago, first by repealing the 1980s ordinance. And then came new zoning rules in 2022 that allowed for these "adult sex venues" again under the city code.Sanctum Baths will be the first new bathhouse project to emerge out of those efforts at City Hall, though there have been rumors of other bathhouse projects in the works.Previously: Co-Owner of Midway to Open the 'Four Seasons' of Gay Bathhouses In SoMa ...read more read less