Downtown SF business district expands to include Ferry Building, Embarcadero Plaza

Money talks louder than optimism - or civic boosterism. After years of grim headlines about the future of downtown San Francisco, the neighborhood's property owners have approved another 10 years of self-imposed assessments to fund services, signaling that recent signs of the area's recovery are worth investing in.

That vote came Tuesday as property owners overwhelmingly approved an unprecedented early renewal and notable expansion of the Downtown San Francisco Partnership, one of the city's more than a dozen Community Benefit Districts, or CBDs. The property-owner-funded districts use special assessments to supplement services such as cleaning, safety, public space programming and increasingly, economic development, within their boundaries.

The newly expanded downtown district will now reach the waterfront and include major destinations such as the Ferry Building and Embarcadero Plaza, while nearly doubling its annual budget from roughly $6.3 million to more than $11 million.

The move appears to be more than a routine renewal of a neighborhood business district. Representatives of the Downtown SF Partnership said they used the renewal process ahead of its 2029 expiration as an opportunity to rethink what the district does and how it invests in downtown's future. City officials said Tuesday's vote reflected an appetite among downtown stakeholders for a broader range of services and a higher level of investment - including from the Port of San Francisco, the waterfront's largest landlord, which for the first time will join the district and pay assessments.

The expanded budget will allow the Downtown SF Partnership to move beyond its traditional cleaning and safety functions while sustaining the broader placemaking and economic development work that grew during the pandemic recovery. That includes signature efforts such as Let's Glow SF, a downtown light and art activation, and the Front Street Entertainment Zone, which transformed part of the Financial District into a hub for outdoor dining and events. 

The district also plans to increase safety ambassador patrols, cleaning and power washing, and expand efforts to recruit businesses into vacant spaces and help convert successful pop-ups into permanent storefronts.

Robbie Silver, Downtown SF Partnership's president and CEO, pointed to the organization's ambassador programs as evidence of the potential impact of expanded services: a Market Street ambassador initiative had been associated with a more than 50% reduction in 911 calls in the area where ambassadors were deployed, he said.

The expansion also reflects a broader shift in how downtown recovery efforts are being funded. During the pandemic, the Downtown SF Partnership relied on temporary city grants and other outside funding to support public space activations and events beyond its baseline services. With those funding sources winding down, the organization is now seeking to build more of those efforts into its long-term operating model.

Anne Taupier, executive director of San Francisco's Office of Economic and Workforce Development, or OEWD, said she sees the Downtown SF Partnership's expansion as a potential model for how CBDs across the city can evolve - with property-owner assessments providing a more sustainable foundation for services and programming that communities have come to expect.

"I'm hoping this is sort of the new goalpost for how our CBDs think about their assessment districts and what they're capable of doing," Taupier said.

OEWD provided the district with $509,000 in grant funding for fiscal year 2026, but that support is being reduced as the city confronts budget constraints. Taupier said the end of pandemic-era state and federal funding has pushed CBDs to consider how they can sustain their activities without relying on public dollars.

Since it was formed in 2019, the downtown district has covered 43 city blocks with more than 170 building facades, including parts of the historic Jackson Square neighborhood and large swaths of the Financial District north of Market Street. Its expansion to a total of 70 blocks reflects a changing view of downtown: one that stretches beyond office towers to include waterfront plazas, gathering spaces and pedestrian corridors that stakeholders increasingly see as critical to attracting people back to the city's core.

In recent years, much of the focus on downtown's recovery has centered on filling its hollowed-out office towers with new tenants and investment. Despite recent leasing gains and notable occupancy improvements, the area's office vacancy rate remains near 30%, underscoring the limits of an office-first recovery strategy. 

Silver said he views downtown's center of gravity as shifting. He pointed to new investment along the waterfront, renewed leasing activity and major public realm projects such as the Embarcadero Plaza redesign as signs that downtown is evolving from an office-centric business district into a more mixed-use neighborhood. 

"There's been just a disconnect between the core of downtown and our waterfront," Silver said. "We plan to fix that."

The expansion comes as the city moves forward with the overhaul of Embarcadero Plaza, a long-planned transformation of one of downtown's most prominent public spaces led by the San Francisco Parks and Recreation Department. The project aims to create a more active and welcoming plaza with improved landscaping and flexible gathering areas. As part of that effort, the Downtown SF Partnership will serve as the park's programming partner.

For Silver, the goal is to create a place that functions as a destination - one where people come not only to work, but to spend time.

"When we have that park done and activated, we are going to finally have a destination in our downtown core versus just the area being a pass through or just a place to work," Silver said.

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