Axios Live: San Francisco's downtown revitalization is in full swing

SAN FRANCISCO — The city is realizing its downtown revitalization plans through a combination of policies, investments and development projects expected to take shape in the coming years, local leaders said at an Axios event last week.

Why it matters: The pandemic devastated San Francisco's downtown, and rising crime and the exodus of many local businesses prolonged its post-pandemic recovery.

• Axios' Shawna Chen and Nadia Lopez spoke with Ned Segal, the City and County of San Francisco's chief of housing and economic development; SPUR chief policy officer Sujata Srivastava, and San Francisco Giants president and CEO Larry Baer at the event, sponsored by JPMorganChase.

What they're saying: "From a policy standpoint, a lot of it has to do with just the narrative of San Francisco, and that I think has really changed in the last year, year and a half," Srivastava said.

• More positive stories about the city have come out, and "partly that's because of the positive changes that have happened on the ground," Srivastava said.
• San Francisco is "going through another revitalization," Baer said, referring to another peak for the city around 2000 when the Big Tech scene exploded.
• "I think we have that now with AI, but also all the AI-adjacent companies that have determined that truly San Francisco … is the place where the intellectual capital exists," Baer added.

The big picture: City leaders are prioritizing policies, private-public partnerships and project plans to make the downtown area a more attractive place to live, gather and do business, while targeting issues such as permitting and housing.

• "You see more people returning to the office, some more tourism and convention business starting to come back," Srivastava said.
• "And then some of the public policy interventions that have been put into place, like events, creating more opportunities for pop-up businesses, all of that is kind of generating a sense of, OK, you know, San Francisco is on the rebound."

Yes, but: "All of this is going to take a long time," however, Srivastava said.

• "Office vacancy rates I think are still at 34%, you still have a lot of vacant storefronts, and so I think there's still a longer term set of solutions that need to be put into place to really create that transformational change that we'd like to see."

The bottom line: "Downtown is this incredible opportunity that we've found ourselves with that nobody hoped for, but we have to look at as an incredible opportunity," Segal said.

• "The goal is not to make downtown like it was in 2019, or like it was in some previous year. We want a downtown that meets this next century."

Content from the sponsored segment:

In a View From the Top conversation, JPMorganChase global chair of investment banking Noah Wintroub explained San Francisco's resurgence.

• "What you've seen in the last several years in terms of revitalization is we all know what's possible, and we went through some hard times, and we figured out that we needed to really step forward," Wintroub said.
• "As you see people step into it, you're seeing a real lot of hope in San Francisco."