Subscriber only: San Francisco event details
A near-final itinerary for you to consider
Hi subscribers,
As you hopefully saw by now, I am hosting a subscriber event in San Francisco on February 20-21.
Five years after the pandemic, this poster child for “urban doom loop” is turning the corner. San Francisco just elected a new mayor and a slate of new officials. It’s building whole new neighborhoods along the waterfront. Office buildings are getting renovated and converted. The city remains at the forefront of the co-living / co-housing movement and public space. And yes, the city is grappling with vacancy, disorder, and displacement, but coming up with some good solutions there, too. I want to see all this! I hope that my effort to pull together a learning experience about San Francisco is of value to you, and that you’ll join me.
Subscribers get first dibs on these invites! The trip is capped at 10 people.
Please read the event details including the disclaimers at the bottom. Here we go!
Afternoon of February 20:
We’ll meet in the Union Square neighborhood to explore some of the innovations that are addressing San Francisco’s challenges of retail vacancy, public disorder, and displacement of the creative community. I’m inviting representatives from Vacant to Vibrant, Urban Alchemy, and Community Arts Stabilization Trust (CAST) to walk us through the neighborhood and stop along the way at specific spots, such as the first Vacant to Vibrant pop-up, Taylor Jay, and CAST’s space on Minna Street.
Some of us will be on East Coast time, so we’ll head out for an early dinner at a local spot, such as Burma Love or Montesacro.
All Day, February 21:
Wear sneakers. We’ll meet up at the historic Ferry Building for coffee and then head over to some recently completed public spaces: the award-winning placemaking project The Crossing at East Cut, and the still kind of new rooftop Salesforce Park. [Bonus for anyone jet-lagged: I’ll be checking out the brand new public space at Fisherman’s Wharf Promenade before our first group stop.]
Downtown SF Partnership will give us a tour of what’s happening in downtown, with stops along the way including the Yes SF space.
We will tour the renovated Transamerica Pyramid building, which recently underwent a $250+ million renovation by developer SHVO and architects Foster + Partners to become a Class A office building with restaurants, public spaces, and more. Check out the video below and the building’s website.
We’ll have lunch at Cafe Sebastian in the Transamerica Pyramid.
Let’s share an autonomous vehicle to Pier 70 — it will be my first time in an AV and maybe yours too!
We’ll explore Pier 70, a 28-acre mixed-use neighborhood in collaboration between the Port of San Francisco and Brookfield Properties, with urban design by SITELAB Urban Studio. Throughout the afternoon, we’ll hear about sea-level rise adaptation and resiliency features.
Also along the waterfront, we’ll see Mission Rock, a new neighborhood-scale development by the Port of San Francisco, the San Francisco Giants, and Tishman Speyer. Given how many cities are trying to ride the coattails of sports and entertainment economies, this should be interesting to many.
We’ll break and reconvene later at Radish, a prototype of the Live Near Friends concept, in Oakland and grab dinner in Oakland.
Thank you to: Alex Yuen, Julie Flynn, David Harrison, Amy Cohen, Claude Imbault, Phil Levin, Chris Trotier, and more for helping make this happen! More thank yous to come I am sure!