In a rational world, a mayor of a city that’s dying would look to reverse the symptoms. If you’re overweight and having all sorts of health issues you don’t switch from cake to ice cream, right? You lose the weight, exercise, eat better, and hopefully decrease all those health issues like diabetes, circulatory system problems, etc. Not in Liberal World
San Francisco mayor proposes tearing down Westfield Mall and other shuttered downtown retailers
San Francisco’s mayor Thursday proposed remaking the city’s struggling downtown by tearing down abandoned retail space, including the city’s Westfield mall, and building new structures to reshape the struggling city.
“We can’t completely rely on retail in downtown restricting what happens in downtown anymore,” Mayor London Breed told Bloomberg’s Technology Summit in San Francisco on Thursday.
Yeah, they just can’t rely on all those business which generate jobs, revenue, and tax money, eh?
Breed’s comments come as San Francisco faces empty offices, a cratering commercial real estate market, and an exodus of retailers from its once-bustling downtown area, especially as pandemic work-from-home policies saw many residents leaving for less expensive parts of the country.
San Francisco has also come under fire recently by politicians, business leaders and locals for a perceived uptick in retail thefts, though it’s not clear that crime has grown significantly more serious, according to industry watchers.
It’s not perceived, and people in SF have long complained about things like car thefts, break-ins, poop in the streets, homeless everywhere, garbage all over, and now they get people committing low level crimes openly.
Breed argued that an overall shift to online shopping post-pandemic has contributed to declining foot traffic in the area.
“You can convert certain spaces. A Westfield Mall could become something completely different than what it currently is,” she said.
“We can even tear down the whole building and build a whole new soccer stadium. We can create lab space or look at it as another company in some other capacity,” she added.
Cool, a soccer field. With poop, homeless, druggies, and drug needles all around it. And people won’t want to go there. Who’s going to pay to build it? Where’s that money coming from with a declining tax base? By the way, has she considered that San Francisco doesn’t own the property? Where’s the money coming from to purchase, then develop it?
Rather than focusing on getting the crime and homelessness problems under control, the aloof and out-of-touch London Breed chooses to talk about building a soccer stadium or create “lab space” whatever that means.
Read: San Francisco’s Mayor Has Hot Ideas For Dying Downtown »