It's the location — 6th & Market (well more like 6th & Jessie) is the roughest block in the city. Rougher than anywhere in the TL.
It's zoned for mixed use (although the donut shop on the ground floor left years ago and I'm pretty sure that space has been vacant for a few years). It's in between Powell and Civic Center stations. It's a pretty decent location, with some great food and entertainment near by although the fancier restaurants closed ages ago. It's basically across the street from the Golden Gate Theater and the Warfield.
The neighborhood is what it is. IKEA and their new, popular, food hall is less than a block away. Looks like there's some hipster dofus AI incubator right there too.
The building itself just wasn't well maintained. Last I saw you were far more likely to get trapped in the elevator than mugged.
I did go out of my way to describe it as “roughest” and not “worst”. Least compatible with the image of perfection projected by the typical tower-dwelling corpo? :)
In fact I have a lot of fond memories from the mid-2010s of stopping by the weed lounge on Jessie for a Volcano bag and a few floors of Isaac Rebirth on my PSVita any time my afternoon train was significantly delayed. Alas that just closed too for the same reason: https://sfstandard.com/2024/02/02/san-francisco-cannabis-dis...