After a three-year exile driven by the pandemic, San Francisco's downtown has waited for the crowds, the commuters and electric ambience to return.
Hotel revenues are stuck at 73% of pre-pandemic levels, weekly office attendance remains below 50% and commuter rail travel to downtown is at 33%, according to a recent economic report by the city.
But other major cities including Portland and Seattle, which also rely on tech workers, are struggling with similar declines, according to the downtown recovery study, which used anonymized mobile phone data to analyze downtown activity patterns from before the pandemic and between March and May of this year.
San Francisco leaders are taking the demise of downtown seriously. Supervisors recently relaxed downtown zoning rules to allow mixed-use spaces: offices and services on upper floors and entertainment and pop-up shops on the ground floor. Legislation also reduces red tape to facilitate converting existing office space into housing.
But for many cities, including San Francisco, it will take more than housing for downtowns to flourish. Still, San Francisco officials say the downtown, which stretches from City Hall to the Embarcadero Waterfront and encompasses the Financial District and parts of the South of Market neighborhood, is in transition.
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