San Francisco Mayor London Breed outlines downtown regeneration plans at State Of The City address

San Francisco Mayor London Breed on Thursday delivered her annual state of the city address outlining her plan to save downtown amid record low office occupancy, layoffs of tens of thousands of Bay Area tech firms, an ongoing crime wave, more workers determined to work from home, and a budget deficit of $728 million.

With all of these issues on the table, Mayor Breed acknowledged in her speech that downtown San Francisco will never look the same as it once did due to massive post-COVID changes and shifts in operations. However, she also noted that San Francisco had faced major rebuilding challenges before, such as after the 1906 earthquake, and did so quickly.

“Downtown San Francisco as we know it is not coming back. And you know what? It’s normal,” Mayor Breed said on Thursday. “This is a call to action to rethink our future. Empty office buildings have spawned gloomy forecasts of economic doom and screaming headlines about the death of downtown. In 1907, the city center consisted mostly of rubble and ash. This is much worse than today’s changes in how people work,

“We have our own problems, but this is not the end of the city center. This is a call to action, to rethink our future, who we can be, to think about what city we are and what city we can be.”

Struggling with the current economic woes of all cities, as well as tackling recent research that the number of remote workers in the city jumped from 7% in 2019 to 46% in 2021 and that San Francisco experienced the weakest recovery of any city since With the COVID-19 pandemic, Mayor Brad on Thursday announced a multi-faceted “Roadmap for the Future of Downtown San Francisco.”

In it, Mayor Breed identified a number of new areas for work, including improving safety and cleanliness, attracting and retaining diverse industries and employers, finding new use cases and flexibility in vacant buildings, making it easier to start a business, growing the workforce, transforming downtown into a cultural and an entertainment center by improving public spaces, improving transportation, and focusing on the city’s positive aspects to attract new residents and businesses.

New plan in San Francisco

While there are several tactics in every area of ​​her plan, none came as a bigger surprise than her proposal to change the city’s tax structure — something that previous administrations have traditionally refused to do about the booming tech industry.

Specifically, her plan includes a significant reduction in the cost of permits, a suspension of tax increases for most businesses remaining in the city, and a three-year tax break for new businesses. To turn the city center into an entertainment center, Mayor Breed even proposed legislation to allow outdoor drinking.

“I am proposing legislation to protect our existing companies by suspending tax increases on our retail business, our hotels, manufacturing sectors, arts and entertainment,” Breed said on Thursday. “The revitalization plan will also prioritize the arts and culture to revitalize the streets.”

“Building a stronger and more sustainable downtown and city will not happen overnight and will require work and partnership with all of our business leaders and employees. This roadmap outlines 9 key strategies to achieve this goal.”

Also of note is a new commitment to police and sanitation efforts, including crackdowns on street vendors, crackdowns on open-air drug dealing in areas like the Tenderloin, more arrests of drug dealers, and more help with medical treatment and housing.

“I want to make one thing clear: I don’t agree with the open-air drug trade in this urban period,” Breed said.

In addition, Breed said that new affordable housing needs to be built and that some former office space in the city will be converted to housing to help meet the city’s affordable housing needs, with more flexible zoning to allow for more commercial and residential mixing. buildings in larger structures in the city center.

Breed received widespread praise for her speech. Even previous detractors have admitted that it’s good that Breed is finally pushing for a change in economic and business policies that has long been ridiculed. However, critics were quick to note that it could take years for her plans to come to fruition. Some noted that areas such as making the city “clean, safe and attractive” were easier said than done, while others noted that suspending taxes and increasing funding for police and sanitation would only increase the city’s budget deficit.

Economic Recovery Questions for Downtown San Francisco

“The problem is that there are so many things to do all over the city that even in isolated areas like Downtown, there is so much to do.” — Thomas Schaeffer, New York-based economics researcher working on urban regeneration plans. said the Globe on Friday. “Many cities have simpler plans to revitalize the waterfront, or bring in a sports team, or whatever, to revitalize this economic engine. San Francisco is experiencing more than just an economic downturn and a high crime rate. They are in danger of losing their core industry. They are losing people living there very quickly. They are in the red. It reads almost like a rust belt city.”

“On top of that, they are facing challenges that cities just haven’t faced before, like half the workforce is suddenly working from home and office vacancies are popping up all over the place. Everything the mayor pointed out yesterday, they all need to work to get San Francisco moving towards change. But even then, many cities planned to revitalize their center, but failed. Or they tried to focus on entertainment, only to blow their face when it turned out that most of the new jobs involved minimum wages and depended on ongoing public interest. I’m surprised they haven’t put more emphasis on tourism as it’s usually more solid.”

Mayor Breed said on Thursday that there is still a long way to go and that “there is not going to be one specific thing that will save downtown.” But for many, including business owners, there was at least some hope on Thursday.

“We’ll see if any of this comes to fruition,” Tonilla Morgan, a small business owner in downtown San Francisco, told The Globe Friday. “But a lot of us here are hoping it works. We are now beginning to see a speck of light at the end of the tunnel, but we also know not to hope too much. We’re not sure if this will work, but we’re pretty damn sure we want it to work.”

More details on the mayor’s plans, including the resolution of the budget deficit, are expected in the coming months.

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