The space where Hilary Passman runs Devil’s Teeth Bakery used to be a restaurant.
Ben Trefny produces radio events in an old Ricoh Copy Center.
And at the bottom-floor restaurant named Teranga, cheffed by Nafy Flatley — it used to be a Mrs. Fields Cookies.
Last summer, the restaurant, the radio station, and the bakery all held nothing.
Passman, Trefny, and Flatley operate in downtown San Francisco. They run small businesses that could never have afforded their new spaces until the plight and blight catalyzed by COVID-19.
“We don’t have the population we used to have,” Flatley said. “We don’t have the number of tourists we used to have.”
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Cities nationwide have struggled to bring foot traffic back to their centers. San Francisco’s skyscrapers hosted companies in tech and finance, industries far more suited to working from home. Now a third of its offices are vacant. A third of its foot traffic has vanished.