Google is planning to move out of one of its massive offices on the edge of San Francisco Bay later this year, Google confirmed to SFGATE on Thursday.
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DISPATCHES FROM THE DOOM LOOP: Former SF County Supervisor Issues Warning about San Francisco Becoming Detroit (Video).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCfHCoBIsew
DISPATCHES FROM THE DOOM LOOP: Is reporting on San Francisco unfair or just accurate?
The story ends with a long list of articles from major media outlets about San Francisco’s problems. The list includes one story from FAIR titled “The Character Assassination of San Francisco” which seems like it might have been the jumping off point for this story. FAIR concludes, “This is media outrage focused not at systemic injustice, but based in disgust at the victims of injustice.”
That really does sum up what all of this is about. For the most part, the Chronicle isn’t complaining that the stories by CNN, Good Morning America, the Financial Times, etc. are untrue. The facts are what they are. San Francisco does have a downtown with more empty commercial space than most cities. It does have a string of closing retailers who have cited crime and street conditions as part of the problem. It does have a failing public transportation system that can’t survive apart from handouts from the state. And it does have a serious problems with homelessness, open-air drug dealing, retail theft and car break ins, all of which are worse than in many other cities.
Rather they are arguing that the coverage is wrong, the articles are arguing it’s wrong-think. These things shouldn’t be mentioned so often not because they are false but because they are true and embarrassing to those who would prefer to view the city as a progressive wonderland where everything is gong swell.
Related flashback: Detroit’s comeback is a myth.
QUESTIONS THAT NO ONE IS ASKING: Could Pickleball End San Francisco’s Doom Loop?
MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: Google quits on huge, longtime San Francisco office in premium location.
As first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, Google plans to depart from its 300,000-square-foot office in One Market Plaza’s Spear Tower within the next year. This is the first time in Google has been reported to be entirely leaving a building in San Francisco, even as the tech giant has moved to cut over a million square feet of office space elsewhere in the Bay Area. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)
“We’re focused on investing in real estate efficiently to meet the current and future needs of our hybrid workforce,” Google spokesperson Ryan Lamont told SFGATE in an email Thursday. “We remain committed to our long-term presence in San Francisco.” (Lamont gave an identical statement to the Chronicle.)
The Chronicle reported that Google’s lease ends in April 2025, but Lamont told SFGATE the company would move out later this year. He did not immediately respond when SFGATE asked for clarification of the timeline for the company’s departure from Spear Tower.
Fortunately, San Fran’s politicians are laser-focused in ending the doom loop, and they demand the same of their would-be successors: San Francisco Mayoral Debate: Democrat Mayor Breed Asks Challenger to Name Three Drag Queens.
JOHN NOLTE: Democrat-Run St. Louis Enters ‘Doom Loop.’
“The office district is empty, with boarded up towers, copper thieves, and failing retail,” reports the Wall Street Journal of Democrat-run St. Louis, Missouri. “[E]ven the Panera outlet shut down. The city is desperately trying to reverse the ‘doom loop.’”
Let’s look at the mayoral history of the doom-looping St. Louis, shall we?
Oh, look, there hasn’t been a Republican mayor in St. Louis since — not a typo — 1949. For 75 years, the people of St. Louis have voted for More of the Same, so excuse me if I don’t whip out a violin over all this unavoidable doom looping.
“Cities such as San Francisco and Chicago are trying to save their downtown office districts from spiraling into a doom loop,” writes the Wall Street Journal. “St. Louis is already trapped in one.”
The Journal notes:
As offices sit empty, shops and restaurants close and abandoned buildings become voids that suck the life out of the streets around them. Locals often find boarded-up buildings depressing and empty sidewalks scary. So even fewer people commute downtown.
This self-reinforcing cycle accelerated in recent years as the pandemic emptied offices. St. Louis’s central business district had the steepest drop in foot traffic of 66 major North American cities between the start of the pandemic and last summer, according to the University of Toronto’s School of Cities. Traffic has improved some in the past 12 months, but at a slower rate than many Midwestern cities.
In the immortal words of Jerry Seinfeld: Yeah, that’s a shame.
As NRO’s Jay Nordlinger wrote in 2010 when Detroit was making headlines and photo spreads thanks to its Hiroshima-like bombed out landscape, “If people are voting a certain way — maybe it’s because they want to. Maybe they know full well what they’re doing. Sometimes you have to take no — such as ‘no to Republicanism’ — for an answer.”
How on earth could we have seen St. Louis’ collapse coming?
● Mark McCloskey’s “day will come,” threatens Cori Bush after St. Louis couple is pardoned by governor.
● St. Louis mayor accused of defunding police department by millions of dollars.
● St. Louis’ murder rate, already highest in US, soared last year; mayor vows to defund the police.
● Gateway to the Wild West: The accelerating collapse of St. Louis, the most violent city in America.
● Soros-backed St. Louis Prosecutor Ensures All Arrested Looters and Rioters Released From Jail.
Law enforcement budgets in the city, which is ravaged by homelessness, drugs and a downtown business exodus, face cuts of $27.6 million, while the public health department could lose a further $25.9 million, according to a DailyMail.com analysis.
The fire department must propose reductions of around $10.5 million to meet the mayor’s demand, while city’s crumbling Municipal Transport Agency must find savings of $15.5 million, a review of official figures suggests.
In a letter dated October 11, Mayor London Breed ordered departments to propose massive cuts to this year’s budgets in order to prevent San Francisco reaching a $500 million deficit by 2025.
The radical cuts mark an embarrassing change of tack from Breed, who is now forced to tear up the record-breaking $14.6 billion annual budget she signed off just three months ago. Department heads across the city have until Thursday, October 26 to propose their cuts.
San Francisco has serious problems with crime, mental health, and drug addiction, so it’s big cuts for police and health.
TURNING JAPANESE? I REALLY DON’T THINK SO: Here are 10 ideas San Francisco can import from Tokyo to save downtown.
San Francisco is at a pivotal moment.
With foot traffic down 31% from pre-pandemic levels, and over 54,000 residents permanently gone, the need for a compelling new vision to revitalize our urban infrastructure is paramount — especially downtown.
I recently had the privilege of visiting Tokyo for the first time — and the city left me nothing short of starstruck with its urban design. Here are 10 ideas I saw that San Francisco can integrate into its city fabric to reinvigorate our ailing downtown.
Car-free streets
Walking through Tokyo, one of the first things I marveled at was the abundance of car-free streets. This widespread flexibility to walk unencumbered by traffic was inspiring.
Moreover, Tokyo’s walkability creates a thriving environment for small businesses and restaurants, as more foot traffic clearly leads to higher patronage. I didn’t see a single corridor where residents weren’t lining up for their favorite restaurant.
By prioritizing pedestrians, Tokyo also lowers air pollution. While San Francisco has about 460 cars per 1,000 people, Tokyo has 232. With this reduction in cars comes a commensurate reduction in traffic, congestion and pollution.
Double our sidewalk size
In the districts of Tokyo where cars are allowed, the sidewalks are massive; The pedestrian-to-car space ratio is easily 2:1.
The benefits of these larger sidewalks compound. More sidewalk space attracts more pedestrians. More pedestrians mean more foot traffic. And more foot traffic means more patronage for local businesses.
Large sidewalks also allow innovative use of space. Many in Tokyo have metal railings to protect pedestrians from cars. There are designated paths for both incoming and outgoing pedestrian traffic (you always walk on the left side in Tokyo). There’s more room for public toilets. And there are vending machines serving water, ramen or even ice cream.
With more sidewalk, there’s more room for people and the things that they need and enjoy.
That’s nice. But curiously unmentioned in the above San Francisco Chronicle article is Japan’s astonishingly small homelessness problem. Why is it so small?
Drug Addiction
Tom Gill, a Japan-based social anthropologist, reported that Japan has a lower homeless population than the US and other countries because Japan has a much lower drug addiction problem. A 2014 study revealed that about 1.6% of the Japanese population tried drugs other than alcohol in their lifetime. Gill said that drugs other than alcohol are strictly illegal and usually only accessible through gangsters. Around 50% of drug users in Japan have gang connections. However, many of Japan’s homeless suffer from alcoholism.
A 67,500 person survey from the National Survey of Drug Use and Health In America showed that over 50% of the population in the US used some form of illegal drug in their lifetime. Drug addiction is one of the reasons for homelessness in America and can prevent people from finding homes and jobs due to a criminal record.
Karla Thennes, the director of a homeless organization called Porchlight in Madison, Wisconsin, described homeless shelters in Madison. Hundreds of people sleep on mats only inches apart with little sanitation. Madison and other cities across America need shelter reforms that are safer and more spacious.
Thennes explained to The Borgen Project that the homeless could not work past addiction in these shelter environments because of a failure to meet basic needs.“You can’t stay sober sleeping in a shelter,” Thennes said.
Mental Health
According to the Homeless Hub, 30-35% of all people who experience homelessness worldwide have a mental illness. In Japan, someone with a mental illness is typically placed into a mental health facility, sparing them from the streets. There are 269 psychiatric beds per 100,000 people in Japan, whereas, in the United States, the number is 25.
In fact, Japan has one of the most efficient health care systems in the world. However, a significant stigma revolves around mental health in Japan and the country sees one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Public insurance in Japan does not cover prescriptions for mental health medications such as antidepressants, and psychologists don’t always have enough training for their profession.
So while Japan’s mental health system ends up reducing the homeless population, their treatment of mentally ill people and available mental health resources struggle to meet an appropriate standard. “Japan has a conservative approach to the treatment of mentally ill people who are generally institutionalized,” reported Gill when he spoke to the Life Where I’m From Youtube channel.
So by all means San Francisco, crack down on drugs and institutionalize those with mental illness — use those ideas from Tokyo to start revitalizing the city.
UPDATE: Free Parking for the Homeless in CA.
Did you know that homeless people enjoy a constitutional right to free parking? That’s the main takeaway from a California Court of Appeals opinion issued Friday that ruled cities that tow cars with five or more unpaid parking tickets violate the 4th Amendment’s prohibition of search and seizure without a warrant.
The Coalition on Homelessness sued the City and County of San Francisco seeking an injunction against towing scofflaw cars that piled up parking tickets, and the trial court had denied the petition. But the Court of Appeals reversed, because “appellant [Coalition on Homelessness] presented declarations regarding the severe impacts of vehicle tows on unhoused San Francisco residents.”
Wait, I thought we wanted San Fran to be more like Tokyo:
(Updated and bumped.)
BEHOLD! MY SHOCKED FACE: Airbnb Bookings Take a Dive in Austin and San Francisco .
GOODER AND HARDER, SAN FRAN: Westfield giving up S.F. mall in wake of Nordstrom closure, plunging sales and foot traffic.
Westfield is giving up its namesake San Francisco mall in the wake of Nordstrom’s planned closure, surrendering the city’s biggest shopping center to its lender after foot traffic and sales plunged during the pandemic.
The company stopped making payments on a $558 million loan, and Westfield and its partner, Brookfield Properties, started the process of transferring control of the mall at 865 Market St. this month.
“For more than 20 years, Westfield has proudly and successfully operated San Francisco Centre, investing significantly over that time in the vitality of the property. Given the challenging operating conditions in downtown San Francisco, which have led to declines in sales, occupancy and foot traffic, we have made the difficult decision to begin the process to transfer management of the shopping center to our lender to allow them to appoint a receiver to operate the property going forward,” the company said.
Nordstrom, which occupies 312,000 square feet in the mall, is closing in August after 35 years when its lease expires. The mall — which includes 1.2 million square feet of retail space and 300,000 square feet of offices — will be only 55% leased after Nordstrom’s departure, far below other U.S. Westfield malls that are, on average, 93% leased.
* * * * * * * *
Westfield’s pullout piles on to the economic turmoil battering the area around Powell Street. Park Hotels & Resorts stopped payments on a $725 million mortgage tied to the nearby Hilton San Francisco Union Square and Parc 55 hotels, two of the largest in the city, and plans to surrender them as well. Next to Westfield mall, Old Navy is also closing in a few weeks, and the April fatal shooting of Banko Brown by a Walgreens security guard on the same block underscored the crime and public safety challenges in the area.
Last month, Westfield blamed “unsafe conditions” and “lack of enforcement against rampant criminal activity” in part for Nordstrom’s departure from the mall.
Exit question: Vacant skyscrapers, empty trains: can San Francisco once again reinvent itself?
Detroit could not be reached for comment.
I’LL TAKE HEADLINES FROM 1995 FOR $500, ALEX: Downtown San Francisco had a good run. Can it recover?
Downtown San Francisco is in distress. Indicators of urban well-being point in the wrong direction: office occupancy, BART ridership and retail foot traffic are down, as is the city’s population. Every week brings news of another high-profile exit: Recent closures include a Whole Foods flagship and Nordstrom, which announced the end of its 35-year run on Market Street due to changes in the “dynamics” of downtown. First Republic Bank, another San Francisco success story, went under after it couldn’t retain its wealthy customers and was sold to JPMorgan Chase. The future of its branches, the familiar green-and-gold presence downtown, is uncertain.
Now barely a day passes without the San Francisco Chronicle or another publication referencing a “doom loop” in the city. There’s a lot of finger-pointing, but no agreement about how to solve the actual issues, including the spiraling homelessness crisis, the unsustainable cost of living or a property crime rate consistently higher than that of similar metropolitan areas. If you see people smiling downtown, they’re probably tourists inside double-decker buses — and even that might be deceptive. Hotel occupancy rates remain significantly below pre-pandemic levels.
Like most people who had a good run for too long, San Francisco didn’t see it coming.
Ahh, but they did see it coming. They simply refused to change course: S.F.’s Homeless Legacy / Two decades of failure.
—The San Francisco Chronicle, September 7th, 2003.
SAN FRANCISCO MORPHED INTO DETROIT SO SLOWLY, I HARDLY EVEN NOTICED: Spiraling in San Francisco’s Doom Loop. What it’s like to live in a city that no longer believes its problems can be fixed:
A note to my fellow San Franciscians: I’m sorry. I know. There’s always some story in the east-coast press about how our city is dying. San Franciscians hate—HATE—these pieces. You’re a stooge and a traitor for writing one. When I set out reporting, I wanted to write a debunking-the-doom piece myself. Yet to live in San Francisco right now, to watch its streets, is to realize that no one will catch you if you fall. In the first three months of 2023, 200 San Franciscans OD’ed, up 41 percent from last year.“It’s like a wasteland,” the guard said when I asked how San Francisco looked to him. “It’s like the only way to describe it. It’s like a video game — like made-up shit. Have you ever played Fallout?”
I shook my head.
“There’s this thing in the game called feral ghouls, and they’re like rotted. They’re like zombies.” There’s only so much pain a person can take before you disintegrate, grow paranoid, or turn numb. “I go home and play with my wife, and we’re like, ‘Ah, hahahaha, this is SF.’”
As NRO’s Jay Nordlinger wrote in 2010 when the original Detroit was making headlines and photo spreads thanks to its Hiroshima-like bombed out landscape, “If people are voting a certain way — maybe it’s because they want to. Maybe they know full well what they’re doing. Sometimes you have to take no — such as ‘no to Republicanism’ — for an answer.”
GOODER AND HARDER, SAN FRAN: Retail exodus: Another major chain announces store closure in San Francisco.
The loss of Nordstrom, a neighboring Saks Off 5th store and other global brands like Uniqlo, Gap and H&M hurts not only the city’s sales tax base and labor force, but also the vitality of critical downtown streets where tourists flock, helping shape San Francisco’s global reputation.
The city’s economic malaise was brought on by remote work and the pandemic, but some city officials and Nordstrom’s landlord also blamed an inadequate response to crime as a key reason for the spate of closures in the city’s chief shopping district…
Weeks of grim news have fueled a debate over public safety and how the city can best promote an economic recovery — or at least stop the bleeding of losing store after store, which feeds into fears of an economic “doom loop.”…
Nordstrom is still expanding in California despite the San Francisco closures. The company said last month it would open five new Rack stores…
And the stores that are left will everything behind plexiglass: San Francisco Target puts entire department on lockdown amid shoplifting crisis.
I’M SO OLD I CAN REMEMBER WHEN THE SOVIET UNION AND CHINA USED TO SWEEP THE DREGS BEFORE A BIG PUBLIC EVENT: Anxious San Francisco Clears Out Homeless Camps, Pushes Back Against ‘Doom Loop’ Narrative as it Readies for Global Summit.