Experts are wrestling with the difficult question of what to do with vacant skyscrapers and commercial real estate in downtown San Francisco, with one suggesting empty buildings could be converted to “waterslides.”
As Breitbart News has reported, downtown San Francisco has been in a state of near-“collapse” since the pandemic, because tech industry commuters have left the city and crime is driving retail businesses out.
The fear among local leaders is that the exodus will lead to a downward spiral, or “death loop,” in which departing businesses follow one after the other, leaving the downtown area an empty and abandoned shell.
The UK Guardian suggests that urban planners have not given up on the city, and that the answer may lie in repurposing commercial real estate — either as residential housing, or as recreational facilities, like water parks:
Sitting in Salesforce Park was Chris Carlsson, a local historian and co-director of Shaping San Francisco, which provides walking, biking and bay cruise history tours of the city. He gestured to the soaring towers around.
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“What does a de-worked downtown look like?” Carlsson mused. He thinks converting as many buildings to residences is one answer. But there’s another option. “Deconstruction is a possibility,” he said. “Start taking stuff down. Why have these towers here if there’s no use for them?
“Maybe there will end up being waterslides in there,” he added, only half joking. “Five stories of waterslides and amusement parks. Why not make giant pinball arcades?”
San Francisco is also currently considering paying reparations of $5 million to long-term black residents, though California entered the Union as a free state in 1850. The city is facing a deep budget deficit.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.