In San Francisco’s Financial District, a coalition of city officials, designers, and business leaders hope an alleyway can be a bellwether for the resurgence of a struggling downtown.
Called the Landing at Leidesdorff, the recently redesigned passageway will feature removable street seating, murals recalling the area’s maritime history as a former wharf, and a village-like atmosphere in the center of downtown, complete with events and programming. Designed by SITELAB (whose office is a block away), this blip of urban activity is a small but important step in reactivating a neighborhood that’s 90% office building and facing serious existential issues.
Office-dense areas of downtown could use the help these days. Pandemic-era remote work shifts have left central business districts empty—after numerous Labor Day deadlines for return-to-office have passed, average office occupancy for major U.S. cities is still hovering around 50%, and McKinsey estimates suggest the value of office real estate has dropped by $800 billion among a handful of leading global cities. It’s putting significant strain on city tax collection and budgets, local retail and restaurants, and even public safety.
While SITELAB’s vision is ambitious, the rollout will be small-scale. Despite a year of work to make it happen, despite the wealth of historic architecture, support from the Mayor’s office and $385,000 in city investment, San Francisco will only pedestrianized a single alleyway as a pilot project (it will be car-free for 16 hours a day). That scale is indicative of a failure of city governments, in San Francisco and nationwide, to seize the pandemic-era opportunity to redesign downtown neighborhoods for the way people want to live.
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