Transforming emptied office towers and other buildings into a new campus would bring an influx of residential students and staff, diversifying the area’s economy by injecting housing and attracting retail and other businesses big and small.
“Frankly, I think this is one of the best directions I’ve heard recently for helping downtown,” said UC Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti. “The potential economic benefits are substantial, locally and citywide, and regionally.”
Most recently, Mayor London Breed and City Attorney David Chiu have joined in, co-signing a letter to the state Board of Regents testing interest in the idea of another University of California campus.
“Bringing students into the heart of San Francisco affords a set of remarkable opportunities,” the letter said. The move would give droves of young people access to “a vibrant and world class metropolitan center, and could also serve to alleviate some of your critical student housing shortfalls at both UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco.”
The president of the Board of Regents, which heads the public higher education system, has not analyzed the proposal yet, a spokesperson told The Chronicle.
In addition to jump-starting construction and other business activity in the still-hollowed-out downtown core — and shifting the city’s economic dependence away from the area’s office monoculture — a state university campus would have the advantage of streamlined bureaucratic rules. As a state entity, the university could conduct and approve its own environmental reviews, rather than being subject to challenges by the Board of Supervisors through San Francisco’s review process. The city would probably need to make accommodations for any potential university project.
But even if the state decided to pursue the approach, it could take many years before potentially tens of thousands of students flowed into the business district.
UC College of the Law San Francisco’s new housing project includes 656 units for students.
Michaela Vatcheva/Special to The Chronicle“I would be surprised if you could do it within a decade,” said David Faigman, chancellor and dean at UC College of the Law San Francisco, the downtown law school formerly known as UC Hastings. If a new university started with a few buildings and course offerings and gradually expanded, it might open within five years, Faigman said. “Anything less would be heroic and unlikely.”
Because the state would probably pay for the project, UC regents, legislators and the governor would all need to agree on a plan and its funding, Faigman said. This could be a time-consuming hurdle.
By comparison, a more modest project — a 57,000-square-foot academic building for UC Law SF, at 333 Golden Gate Ave. — was finished in early 2020 and took about seven years from start to finish, and didn’t get funding until the second year. Another building, called the Academe at 198, is slated to open Aug. 4, and will contain 656 housing units for students.
UC schools are not the only potential future candidates.
A university interested in capitalizing on the growing artificial intelligence industry, or other technology sectors that have long had a presence in San Francisco and the region, might consider setting up a satellite campus in San Francisco’s downtown area.
Indeed, universities have created large college communities in several major cities like New York, Cambridge, Mass. (Boston), and Chicago.
Some private schools already have a presence in San Francisco and the Bay Area, including Golden Gate University and the University of San Francisco, which might be interested in expanding into the city’s downtown, said Kristen Soares, president of the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities, which lobbies for and otherwise represents private, nonprofit colleges in discussions with government officials.
Perhaps Stanford University would be a good fit, Soares added, with its strong programs feeding the biotech and tech industries. A school that already has a satellite campus in the city, such as Pennsylvania-based Wharton San Francisco business school, might also want to grow its presence, she said.
UC College of the Law San Francisco’s new housing project, the Academe at 198 on McAllister Street, includes a bar lounge.
Michaela Vatcheva/Special to The ChroniclePrivate universities would be more subject to bureaucratic delays than their state-funded counterparts, though they would not need to rely on the state for project funding. “We can move more quickly, as independent nonprofit universities, that much is true,” Soares said.
To make the work more doable, city officials could work directly with a private school to identify suitable buildings for costly conversions into classrooms, dorms and other purposes, and map out the entire development process and associated costs, Soares said.
City officials have not contacted her about the possible work, Soares said.
“We’re eager to learn more and be involved in the discussions,” she said.
The Chronicle requested comment from multiple private schools, including Stanford and Wharton, but they either declined to comment or did not respond.
When asked whether academic institutions had responded to Mayor Breed’s letter, spokesperson Jeff Cretan said, “I don’t have an update on conversations we are having at this time.”
“This is about recognizing the opportunities that could exist and showing the city’s willing partnership to make these kinds of opportunities a reality,” Cretan said in a statement. Downtown has “significant” potential to see an academic presence grow, he said, and “there is no one building or set of buildings that this is limited to.”
Beyond the Academe, UC Law SF will also renovate preexisting housing in another building, and plans to create hundreds of new homes at yet a third property, for a total of about 1,000 potential housing units in San Francisco, Faigman said. The Academe’s units are already more than 50% leased.
“We’re creating what we’re calling the academic village,” Faigman said. “And the model is Boston.”
There, Northeastern University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University and Boston University are all in or near the Cambridge area. “It turns Boston into something of a university town that’s surrounded by the history, culture and restaurants that it’s famous for,” he said.
If leaders in the UC system and the state Capitol quickly declared an interest in creating a university corridor in downtown San Francisco, it could boost the city’s image and be a reason for businesses to stick around or consider settling here, Faigman said.
“Just imagine Market Street being the campus walkway from department to department, and from dorm to dorm. It is eminently walkable from the Embarcadero to the Civic Center, and you could take advantage of buildings on both sides of Market to build an extraordinary campus,” he said.
Reach Noah Arroyo: noah.arroyo@sfchronicle.com
