July 22–Hotel beds may replace Big Macs at the busy McDonald’s on Third Street just up the block from AT&T Park, the latest in what is shaping up to be a new wave of hospitality development in the city, especially in areas where tech is located.

Stonebridge Corp., a Colorado hotel development firm, is planning to build a 225-room hotel on the 13,750-square-foot McDonald’s property at 701 Third St.

The 10-story hotel at Third and Townsend would provide much-needed rooms at the crossroads of tech-dominated SoMa and the mixed-use neighborhood that has popped up around the ballpark over the past decade, said project architect Michael Stanton of Stanton Architecture.

“It will be a very distinctive, handsome hotel,” he said. “If you think about the locations in San Francisco where hotels should be, this is one of them.”

The sidewalk in front of the McDonald’s and adjacent lot is a popular spot before Giants games for ticket scalpers and freelance souvenir vendors and attracts a sometimes raucous crowd after big wins.

While San Francisco’s skyline is filling up with office buildings and apartment towers, hotel development has lagged well behind. Currently, only one new hotel is under construction in San Francisco, a 172-room Hampton Inn that will open in the fall at 942 Mission St. The last new hotel built in San Francisco was the Intercontinental at Fifth and Howard streets, which opened in 2008.

Hotel occupancy at high

Hotels currently are above 80 percent occupancy, a historical high for the city. Average room rates jumped 13.4 percent over the past 12 months to $203.18, according to STR Global, a hotel industry research group. That was the biggest year-over-year increase in the United States. It also is creating a windfall for city hotel tax revenue, which increased $31.9 million, or 13.2 percent, to $273 million.

“We have some of the highest demand we have ever had in the city,” said Joe D’Alessandro, president and CEO of San Francisco Travel, the tourism marketing organization.

With a $500 million Moscone Convention Center expansion set for completion in 2018, San Francisco is going to need more hotel rooms, said hotel consultant Rick Swig. The problem is that hotel builders looking to buy development sites are competing against office and housing builders — and right now the city is in a housing affordability crisis.

“San Francisco is ripe for hotel development, but first and foremost we need more housing,” Swig said.

But the industry is starting to stir.

Pre-recession project

At 144 King St., a block from the McDonald’s site, Bay Area developer David O’Keefe has pulled permits to build a $26.4 million, 12-story, 130-room hotel. The project has been in the works since before the economy crashed in 2008, but financing was unavailable until recently. Stanton, who is the architect on this project also, said demolition of the existing building at 144 King St. (most recently the King Art Cafe) will start at the end of baseball season.

“It is (O’Keefe’s) intent to start construction right after the last pitch of the Giants’ final home game,” Stanton said. “We think we can complete the demolition, dig the hole and have the framing substantially finished by the time next season begins.” O’Keefe was traveling and could not be reached for comment.

A third Mission Bay hotel is also in the works. Next year SOMA Hotels, an affiliate of Stanford Hotels Group, will break ground on a 15-story, 250-room boutique hotel — just across Lefty O’Doul Bridge from AT&T Park.

In addition to the three hotels in Mission Bay, Mid-Market is attracting hotel builders. Two historic vacant Mid-Market buildings, the Renoir Hotel and the Grant Building, will reopen as hotels catering to the tech companies that now line central Market Street. A third hotel, a ground-up development, is planned for 1055 Market St., most recently the Kaplan’s Army-Navy store.

While the vast majority of San Francisco’s 33,000 hotel rooms is clustered in four neighborhoods: Union Square, the Financial District, Fisherman’s Wharf and around Moscone Convention Center, the new construction is pushing those boundaries.

“You are going to see more demand for hotel rooms in deep SoMa, Mid-Market and Mission Bay because so many businesses are growing in those areas,” D’Alessandro said. “We have heard anecdotally that visitors would like to see smaller hotels outside of the core areas.”

The city is also looking at potential sites for a mega-hotel near Moscone Center. Two city-owned garages — the Moscone garage and the Fifth and Mission garage — could be redeveloped with a hotel tower over parking. “These large groups want to have their people in as few hotels as possible,” D’Alessandro said.

Stanton, who has four San Francisco hotels at various stages of development, said he is “happy to see hospitality bouncing back because it is such a great multiplier for our economy.”

J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: [email protected] Twitter: @SFjkdineen