San Francisco Mayor London Breed is desperate. She asked investors to "start re-imagining what the downtown can be" and to look past crime-ridden streets, homelessness encampments, open-air drug market, the exodus of businesses, and the commercial real estate meltdown that her administration's failed progressive policies helped spark.
"I think we have to start re-imagining what the downtown can be," Breed said at Thursday's Bloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco.
She continued: "Let's look at what's possible rather than dwelling on the stories of another store closing — there are a lot of people who may not even shop in those places" because of the proliferation of online shopping.
Breed said there's a need to convert dormant office buildings into housing, demolish buildings, and attract new business to the downtown area. And just how many buildings could the mayor convert? Well, as many as 30% of the city's office space is now vacant -- a record high.
She said the Westfield Mall, the largest mall in the downtown area, could be demolished, and the land used as "something completely different." Recall weeks ago, Westfield and its partner Brookfield Properties stopped making payments on a $558 million loan tied to the mall, citing "challenging operating conditions" related to out-of-control crime.
Breed is desperately searching for solutions to stop the exodus of businesses and people from the metro area. She recently made a giant U-turn to fund the police after her defunding campaign backfired.
The mayor faces a budget deficit of $780 million that could exceed a billion dollars by 2026. The implosion of the city and the worsening CRE apocalypse might indicate no sane investor will want to touch the downtown area unless the progressives at City Hall are voted out. Voters have already booted out the city's Soros-backed district attorney. We suspect the voters will boot out more progressives who have single-handedly transformed the once thriving metro area into a hellhole.
