Lurie Backers Form Nonprofit to Help Revive Downtown SF

Rich backers of San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie may put their money into reviving the city’s beleaguered downtown.

Allies of the newly elected mayor launched San Francisco Downtown Development, a nonprofit group that wants to raise money from wealthy residents to revitalize the central business district, the San Francisco Standard reported.

Its board includes Bob Fisher, a scion of the Gap retail fortune; Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay and Hewlett-Packard; and crypto billionaire Chris Larsen.

The new group is the second civic organization founded under Lurie’s “open for business” campaign to fix a Downtown hammered by a pandemic shift to remote work and persistent crime that has driven off shoppers, tourists, and conventioneers. He touted the initiative on his campaign site.

The other one, Partnership for San Francisco, was founded by high-powered CEOs and corporate leaders to work with City Hall on policies supported by the business community.

San Francisco Downtown Development intends to raise unspecified funds it can quickly spend on projects like planting trees, lending money for small-merchant capital projects and providing bridge loans to retailers and others who want to open businesses downtown.

Other board members include Sam Cobbs, CEO of Tipping Point Community, the anti-poverty organization founded by Lurie; Rebecca Foster, CEO of the San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund, involved with an initiative to raise money for interim housing for homeless residents; and Olga Miranda, president of SEIU Local 87, representing janitors in downtown offices.

Speed is of the essence in raising and deploying the money needed to get projects off the ground, David Stiepleman, chief organizer and chairman of the board chair, told the Standard.

While future efforts will require new legislation and other measures, “this is the ‘Let’s move now’ initiative,” he said.

First on the burner: a fund that could be used to finance heaters for outdoor seating at restaurants, or provide loans for downtown office or retail tenants that might not qualify for credit, he said.

Stiepleman, co-president of Sixth Street, the locally based investment firm that just bought a stake in the San Francisco Giants, said the group’s goal is to coordinate and centralize activities now performed by a collection of community business districts in and around downtown.

Such districts act as local taxing authorities, while San Francisco Downtown Development will solicit tax-deductible donations, according to the Standard.

Lurie and former Mayor London Breed have trumpeted the revitalization of downtown as critical to rebuilding San Francisco, whose office vacancy hovers at 36.6 percent. Stiepleman said downtown makes up 4 percent of the city, and “45-ish percent of its tax revenue, which should be higher.”

— Dana Bartholomew