The three-block stretch of Powell Street between San Francisco’s Union Square and the cable-car turnaround on Market Street has been blighted for years with a large percentage of commercial vacancies in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Shortly on the heels of electoral defeat, Mayor London Breed’s administration announced this week a nearly $3 million expansion of her signature Vacant to Vibrant program to Powell Street and other parts of downtown, as well as the availability of $4.9 million in loans and grants to help small businesses open downtown.
Breed was touting the latest initiatives among a panoply of city contributions made under her leadership that were aimed at bolstering The City’s commercial sector, which has been stubbornly sluggish downtown. “Powell Street is going to be something different,” promised Breed following a Tuesday press conference staged to highlight “more than $115 million” in investments in small businesses her administration claimed The City has made since the pandemic. Despite those investments and a robust city economy and an unemployment rate of just 3.
4%, The City’s retail market vacancy rate rose to another record high of 7.9% in the third quarter of 2024, up from 7.7% in the second quarter and 6.
4% a year earlier, according to a report from Cushman & Wakefield. On Powell Street between Geary Street and Market Street, significant ground-floor stretches on all three blocks remain vacant, though just blocks away numerous lux.
