City officials in San Francisco are planning to move their offices out of a building in crime-infested downtown.
The offices are currently in a downtown building near City Hall.
The San Francisco Standard reported Friday that the city will pull the offices due to high rent and a bad real estate market.
The outlet reported that the 11-story building in the city’s downtown area was initially leased to city and county officials back in 1999.
Over the years, it has served as office space for many municipal departments like the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, the Office of the Treasurer & Tax Collector, the Mayor’s Office of Disability, and the Department of the Environment.
Accoridn to the Standard, the San Franciscan Board of Supervisors rejected an opportunity to renew a lease agreement with the owner of the building, the nonprofit LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, in 2023
This act has placed the building into special servicing to determine whether the owner can pay off its debts amounting to a $48 million mortgage due in Jan. 2025, according to Trepp, a real estate data company.
“Losing the City as a tenant would create a great financial hardship for the Lighthouse for the Blind,” LightHouse CEO Sharon Giovinazzo told the Standard in an email.
Giovinazzo also told the outlet that the city has not yet responded to a request from LightHouse.
The request asks to provide additional discounts on the rental costs that include two years of free rent.
Giovinazzo said that she remained pessimistic and that the city is likely to “abandon the building that literally sits in the shadows of City Hall.”
According to the Standard, Jeff Cretan, a spokesman for the city’s Democrat Mayor London Breed, said:
“We are being responsible with taxpayer funds and looking for the best opportunities to continue to have a strong presence [in] our Downtown and Market Street area.
“The isn’t about quitting downtown — it’s about finding a new building.”
The latest tenant likely to quit its downtown San Francisco lease? The city itself. https://t.co/oWbBUXSzmR
— The San Francisco Standard (@sfstandard) March 15, 2024
The city is not the only tenant that has soured on downtown San Francisco.
Retail and corporate businesses have fled the city and the state of California altogether in recent years.
Many have cited concerns over the “safety of their employees” and bad “local business conditions.”
The mass exodus comes amid soaring violent crime, rising costs, and homelessness.
“It just [isn’t] the same city it used to be,” Frank Russo, a business owner, told the California Globe.
“In the 80s and 90s, there was still something to it.
“People were proud of the city, and while there was crime and everything, it wasn’t that big of a worry.
“You could also walk down the sidewalks, as no tents were there.”
Nordstrom, an iconic clothing store, closed its San Francisco branch’s doors permanently back in Aug. 2023 after 35 years of business.
The move came due to the crime wave in the city.
In some areas of the city, crime has increased by 240% in one year alone.
