Santa Fe Club (Now Andante Condominiums)
Emeryville’s position as a transportation hub helped push development along the San Pablo Avenue corridor, with many businesses catering to the workers and travelers of the nearby Santa Fe Depot and Key System lines.
A building at the northern end of the block, spanning 3984–3992 San Pablo Avenue, was subdivided to house a variety of local restaurants and diners. These included The Golden Gate Sea Food & Grill in 1931, followed by Steve’s Coffee Shop in 1932 and the Liberty Cafe in 1933.
By 1947, 3992 San Pablo Avenue was occupied by the Santa Fe Buffet, a bar and restaurant owned by a gentleman named George Samuels. News archives during this period also list the address as the Santa Fe Lounge and the Santa Fe Cafe. There is evidence that Samuels also operated an underground bookie joint out of his restaurant.
In 1949, the Santa Fe Club cardroom was opened inside the Santa Fe Buffet with four tables. Card games included draw poker, low ball and a Polish game called “pan.”
By 1954, property records list “Milt” Williamson as the proprietor of the Santa Fe Club. Williamson passed away in 1984 and the business continued under his daughter Evelyn but the business was already in decline and shuttered in 1985.
The Santa Fe Club property was eventually bought by a Taiwanese businessman named Wei Teng who remodeled it into the King Midas Club, which opened in 1989. They were open 24 hours a day offering poker variants as well as a “Player Banked” version of Pai Gow which was popular among the Asian clientele it mostly catered to.
The business almost immediately found itself in legal troubles stemming from alleged ties with the Asian underworld including the powerful Hong Kong and Taiwan triads. In 1990 a former King Midas employee was shot and killed in SF with authorities claiming he had ties to Asian gangs.
In 1992, owner Wei Teng was the target of a murder-for-hire stemming from a conflict with a former business partner.
The club was raided by authorities in April 1992 with the subsequent investigations exposing labor and financial irregularities as well as suspected money laundering. The raid implicated financial ties to a notorious Taiwanese gangster named David “The Investor” Fang.
While being investigated, Teng pursued a more “legitimate” vision for redeveloping the block adding multi-family housing, storefronts, a larger gaming area and a car dealership that would sell the “Beijing Jeep” imported from China.
He acquired the adjacent Key Club & Hotel property as part of this vision.
Oakland, California · Thursday, August 04, 1994.
Things soon began to unravel for Teng. Without the financial backing of the Asian underworld, King Midas lacked the capital to continue and filed for bankruptcy protection.
In 1997, City Council voted to revoke their permit noting a “continuing pattern of deceit” estimating the club owed them $5 million in unpaid taxes.
Their closure left the Oaks Club as the last remaining Card Club in the city.
The City’s redevelopment agency purchased the site in bankruptcy court for $2.5 million demolishing The former King Midas Club and Key Club & Hotel buildings.
The city sold the land to a private developer who completed the 125-unit Andante mixed-use project in 2005.
