As the article mentions, SF needs to do some large-scale rezoning to avoid a gutted downtown.
The city's approach to drug use probably doesn't help, but the pandemic-motivated downturn in foot traffic is the most obvious culprit.
The city's approach to drug use probably doesn't help, but the pandemic-motivated downturn in foot traffic is the most obvious culprit.
I wager SF was affected harder more than most downtowns due to high commercial rents, tons of startups that were nimble and moved, and lots of progressive big companies that are actually adapting to WFH reasonably well.
I wish commercial rents would drop significantly and more mixed use was permitted for new galleries, bars, clubs and residential.
I personally have hope SF will figure it out. It’s a town of constant change.
Yeah, though I think it doesn't help that downtown SF has relatively low population density compared to downtown Manhattan. When the return-to-office plans started to kick in there weren't a ton of workers with very short commutes who were eager to be back in-office.
You need customers for retail to exist. People working for SF-based companies don't want to go to the office (you might make an argument it's for crime reasons, but it feels obvious the overriding reason is just wanting to work from home). So retail is suffering. Notice how crime plays at best a second order effect there. Yet every story on HN about this topic is filled with people saying it's crime.
No druggies/dealers = people move back to the area
People move back to the area + no druggies/dealers = businesses move back to the area
It feels just like there are so many more simple narratives here. Like seriously, there's a supermarket that looks larger and has a parking lot just there! Why would people bother crossing a 4-lane highway to go to whole foods? And so you're left with a huge supermarket that is trying to cater purely to foot traffic, outside of a place with that much of it to begin with. It sure feels like hubris meant this site simply did not work.
It just feels like such a stretch to claim that crime is the thing here.
Walgreens’ CFO has said outright that the crime stuff was overblown , 2 years later [0]
[1] has a breakdown of the arguments for why this stuff doesn’t align with reality (“biased” of course, as it’s a media critique podcast, but I find their arguments convincing. I admit they confirm my priors)
“Safety” and “shoplifting” are of course not the same. And many people here talk about feeling unsafe going there. But people also mention it being empty! And there’s a Safeway across the street.
Companies like making money. Something tells me you don’t close down a massive store if it were making money. “Large supermarket without a parking lot in an area without much foot traffic” just seems like an expensive proposition.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shopli...
[1] https://citationsneeded.medium.com/news-brief-organized-crim...