“I don’t know of a finer family to do good for San Francisco than the Shorensteins”
—-Port Commissioner Mike Hardeman
Thanks to activists in the Citizens to Save the Waterfront, the Mills Corporation will not be building a shopping mall at Piers 27-31. The San Francisco Port Commission will now choose between two new developers, the Shorenstein Co. and Farallon Capital Management LLC. Given its longtime prominence in San Francisco, Shorenstein would appear to have the inside track on winning Port Commission and Board of Supervisors approval for their proposed project. But before Shorenstein is given control of the Piers, the Board should require the company to be a good neighbor in the Tenderloin. Shorenstein has allowed its office building at 25 Taylor Street to remain vacant for over a decade, closed down retail spaces on Golden Gate, and allowed a vacant lot to attract nuisance activities at Golden Gate and Jones Streets. Why should Shorenstein be given prime city land when it is hurting progress in the Tenderloin?
The Shorenstein Company is San Francisco’s largest owner of downtown commercial property and is a major political player in City Hall, Sacramento, and in Washington DC. Walter Shorenstein was once America’s biggest individual donor to the Democratic Party, and likely played the greatest role in implementing the transformation of San Francisco into an international financial, legal and business center.
As Walter has turned the family business over to son Doug, the Shorenstein family has kept a lower profile. The days of battles over highrise office development are long over, with residential towers representing the new factor in the San Francisco skyline.
But despite the company’s vast wealth and power, it has long acted as one of the Tenderloin’s least caring landlords. In fact, while the Shorenstein Co. has had the ability for years to make positive contributions to the neighborhood’s business climate, it has gone the other way, actively slowing the community’s economic growth and social progress.
Closed storefronts under Golden Gate Theater; empty 25 Taylor office building is around corner.
Consider how the Shorenstein Co. evicted an entire building of nonprofit organizations at 25 Taylor Street over a decade ago, and has allowed the property to sit vacant. This action eliminated from the neighborhood over 100 employees who would eat lunch out, patronize local groceries, and otherwise inject money into local businesses.
During the dot-com boom of the late 1990’s, San Francisco nonprofits facing eviction were desperately seeking space. But Shorenstein Co. kept 25 Taylor closed, ensuring that a positive influence would not be brought into an area (Turk and Taylor) that remains troubled by problem street behavior.
The Shorenstein Co. is almost single-handedly responsible for the problems bordering its long vacant parking lot at Golden Gate and Jones, and has left multiple storefronts vacant on the other side of the street adjacent to the Golden Gate Theatre. The tragedy of the Shorenstein’s control of these two sites is that both were formerly thriving; the parking lot was once the site of the beautiful Paramount Theatre, while the storefronts once had colorful awnings and theatre-related businesses that positively contributed to the community.
The Shorenstein-owned Golden Gate Theatre appears to go out of its way to avoid generating a bright, exciting environment. The Theatre does not illuminate its available sign space, and seems to be dark more often than not.
The great irony, of course, is the Shorenstein Co. has blamed the surrounding neighborhood for its failures at the Golden Gate Theatre. Yet they have created dead space surrounding their landmark building, and allowed a parking lot to remain across the street where ground-floor retail could provide the perfect environment for pre and post-show restaurants and cafes.
Defensive about its mistreatment of a low-income neighborhood, the Shorenstein Co. has trumpeted the millions of dollars it spent retrofitting its Orpheum Theatre. But that expenditure did nothing to improve the surrounding neighborhood, and the Orpheum is as resistant to bright lights and excitement as its companion theater, the Golden Gate.
Doug Shorenstein, who will lead the company’s effort to gain control of the piers, has not been involved in the theater side of his family’s business. That’s been left to sister Carol, whose lack of interest in improving the Tenderloin is notorious.
But if Port Commissioner Mike Hardeman and others believe that the Shorenstein family will “do good” for San Francisco, than Carol’s real estate holdings cannot be ignored. There is simply no reason the Port Commission or Board of Supervisors should grant a prime piece of real estate to a family business that is acting irresponsibly in a low-income community only a few miles away.
Nobody is asking the Shorenstein’s to make a sizable financial donation or otherwise offer “charity” to the Tenderloin. But keeping so much commercial space vacant in a neighborhood with a shortage of office space, and that needs ground floor retail for safety reasons, is simply wrong.
In the recent photograph show on “The Forgotten Mid-Market,” the Golden Gate Theatre was seen as a bustling site, whose retail establishments had colorful awnings and whose signs and lights were so brightly illuminated that one could read a newspaper on the sidewalk at night.
But that was before the Shorenstein family acquired the Theatre, and implemented a policy of malicious neglect toward the Tenderloin.
The Board of Supervisors should not approve the Shorenstein takeover of Piers 27-31 unless the company at least reopens its office building at 25 Taylor Street. That’s what a family that wants to “do good” for San Francisco would do.
Send feedback to rshaw@beyondchron.org
