Daniel Lurie’s ‘plan’ to fix downtown is off to a vague start
By Adam Lashinsky
Editor-at-large, San Francisco Standard
Published Jan. 29, 2025 • 6:00am
Nearly a year ago, when Macy’s kicked an already-down San Francisco by announcing it was closing its beloved flagship store in Union Square, one of the candidates running to defeat Mayor London Breed was quick to lay blame.
“City Hall insiders have destroyed a vibrant downtown many of us remember, and are now asking for a second chance,” Daniel Lurie wrote on social media just over an hour after the news broke. “We need new leadership.” He told reporters that a “failure to challenge the system” would keep the city from rebuilding and that one of the chief culprits was “layers and layers of bureaucracy upon bureaucracy,” which he intended to fix.
Lurie had a three-point plan, or at least a tweeted version of one. It entailed improving public safety, creating a “permit shot clock” so businesses would know where their applications stand, and “reforming conditional-use permits,” presumably speeding along exceptions to the city’s onerous permitting laws for businesses.
Fast-forward to last week, when Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s more glamorous corporate sibling, announced that it, too, was packing up, dealing a likely death blow to the once grand San Francisco Centre mall on Market Street.
This time, Lurie was far less emphatic about finger-pointing.
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