Cruising The Past Cruise News 
The economic challenges of the city’s downtown since the BLM riots in 2020 have sparked speculation of a so-called ‘doom loop’. It’s happened. Once a major tourist center, San Francisco hotels, from five star to no star, are offering up to 60% discount.
The operator of the gondola that services Salesforce Park, an oasis among the skyscrapers in downtown San Francisco, will tell you all about how the 5-acre (2-hectare) rooftop space you’re about to enter contains 1,600 plants, 600 trees and more than a dozen ecosystems.
From this far up the fortress walls, the city looks like a futuristic utopia, with office workers milling about in the sun and free yoga on Fridays.
But the transit center underneath – the newly built hub that was announced before the pandemic with great fanfare and was supposed to ferry in workers from all over the region to downtown – is quiet, save for the metaphorical tumbleweeds. The city’s main public transport systems are collapsing under the weight of their own emptiness. The number of riders on the Bart system is around 40% of what it was before the pandemic, and only 30% for riders who exit in downtown San Francisco. Without a $5bn bailout, service cuts to some of the city’s transit lines could start as soon as this summer.
Once home to some of the most expensive and sought-after office space in the world, San Francisco today is suffering from one of the most hollowed-out downtowns in North America.
Along Market Street, the main thoroughfare, “office space available” and “for sale or lease” signs solicit new businesses. Office vacancy in the first quarter of 2023 ranged between 26.4% and 29.4%, depending on the tally. It’s a steep increase from the historic low vacancy rate of 4% in early 2020. Pinterest, Meta, Reddit, Salesforce, Slack, Uber and Twitter have all vacated or reduced their office space as remote or hybrid work has prevailed.
The emptiness has made some of the city’s other problems – an enduring homelessness emergency, open-air drug use in some neighborhoods and high rates of property crime – seem more visible. And it has sparked speculation that the city is at the verge of a so-called “doom loop”, a spiral down into debt that will force it to cut social and transportation services, which will in turn perpetuate more disinvestment
Once home to some of the most expensive and sought-after office space in the world, San Francisco today is suffering from one of the most hollowed-out downtowns in North America.
Along Market Street, the main thoroughfare, “office space available” and “for sale or lease” signs solicit new businesses. Office vacancy in the first quarter of 2023 ranged between 26.4% and 29.4%, depending on the tally. It’s a steep increase from the historic low vacancy rate of 4% in early 2020. Pinterest, Meta, Reddit, Salesforce, Slack, Uber and Twitter have all vacated or reduced their office space as remote or hybrid work has prevailed.
The emptiness has made some of the city’s other problems – an enduring homelessness emergency, open-air drug use in some neighborhoods and high rates of property crime – seem more visible. And it has sparked speculation that the city is at the verge of a so-called “doom loop”, a spiral down into debt that will force it to cut social and transportation services, which will in turn perpetuate more disinvestment.
San Francisco’s chief economist, Ted Egan, thinks that label is probably premature. “To me, a doom loop is Detroit in the 1970s. There’s nothing you can do to bring auto plants back – every auto plant that closes makes the next one want to close, and a cycle of disinvestment makes people want to disinvest more.”
Despite layoffs in past months, the tech economy of the Bay Area is strong, argued Egan, with more tech jobs in the city now than at the start of the pandemic. Unemployment in the city is the second lowest in the state, he said.
But he admitted the city faces significant challenges. “It’s everything but tech that hasn’t recovered,” he said – and without businesses downtown, why would anyone go there?
