University in downtown SF is the latest hot idea. Is it realistic?

“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.

“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.

Private 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.