Virus restrictions play a role in keeping heart of SF empty
SANFRANCISCO— Before the pandemic, Senor Sisig food trucks were a common sight in downtown San Francisco, dishing out Filipino fusion tacos and burritos to long lines of workers who spilled out of office towers at lunch.
The trucks now are gone, forced into the suburbs because there’s practically no one around to feed in the city’s center.
As the coronavirus pandemic transforms San Francisco’s workplace, legions of tech workers have left, able to work remotely from anywhere. Families have fled for roomy suburban homes with backyards. The exodus has pushed rents in the prohibitively expensive city to their lowest in years. Tourists are scarce, and the famed cable cars sit idle.
The food trucks, like many other businesses, are wondering when things will bounce back.
“Is it ever going to get back to normal, is it ever going to be as busy as itwas — andwill that be next year, or in 10 years?” said Evan Kidera, CEO of Senor Sisig.
On Tuesday, more of San Francisco reopened for business after Mayor London Breed declared two weeks ago that the city’s low virus case numbers allowed it to move into California’s most permissive reopening tier. That means more people can go back to the office, eat indoors at restaurants, visit museums and soon even enjoy a beer or cocktail — outdoors — at a bona fide drinks-only bar.
It is the only urban county in the state to hit this tier, joining a handful of sparsely populated rural ones.
In March, counties in the Bay Area jointly ordered their residents to stay at home, becoming the first region in the country to do so. And San Francisco itself was even slower than its neighbors to reopen restaurants, gyms and salons.
The result: San Francisco, which pre-pandemic had nearly 900,000 residents, has recorded just over 12,200 virus cases and 145 deaths, among the lowest death rates in the country
But the restrictions also played a role in shutting down critical elements of San Francisco’s vibrant economy — tourism, tech andthe city’s main business and financial districts, packed with high-rise condos, office towers and headquarters for the likes of Twitter, Pinterest and Slack.
The restaurant industry projects half the eateries in a city consumed with innovative dining may not survive the pandemic.
Companies in the nation’s tech capital, where Google, Facebook and Salesforce, the city’s largest employer, have extensive office space, were quick to embrace remote working and when the lockdown came, an estimated 137,500 tech workers seemingly vanished overnight.
San Francisco’s office vacancy rate has since nearly tripled compared with December to 14.1%, the highest since 2011, said Robert Sammons, a senior researcher with commercial real estate group Cushman & Wakefield.
Residential rents that were among the highest in the country have plummeted, with the median price for a one-bedroom apartment dropping 20% to $2,800, according to rental listing platform Zumper.
With so many people working remotely, the central financial and retail districts have a long way to go to recapture their pre-pandemic bustle. Nearly 100,000 people on packed commuter trains used to get off at downtown’s two busiest stops each weekday, most of them from the suburbs. Now, Bay Area Rapid Transit ridership is down nearly 90%.