Real estate investors often portray preservationists as bogeymen in San Francisco land use fights: a narrow-minded constituency that would stop progress and preserve neighborhoods in amber.
But in post-pandemic San Francisco, it turns out, protecting the past can be very lucrative.
Real estate values in downtown have hit rock-bottom , vacancy rates across its shiny office towers remain at an all time high and once promising new housing and commercial projects are languishing. But, one small downtown-adjacent neighborhood that, for decades, has been staunchly protected from new development is an outlier…