With just under 3000 rooms in the 2 hotels, the city could take them over as homeless shelters and get everyone off the street. Cheaper than what they are doing now, sadly.
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We just came back from spending few days in Memphis which is rated #1 in violent crimes in US. We had a great time. People were friendly. It was refreshing not to see tents and garbage on every block as we do in CA. I think when we travel we don’t see problems like locals do.
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regarding the post about doing something in the bay area about the homeless: it’s a double edged sword; the weather in san francisco. Homeless can survive there year-round; they can’t the frigid areas of the country. We do no have a homeless problem here, but don’t have the great weather of the bay area. Can’t change the weather.
One thread has already been closed for going in circles about San Francisco crime levels. Please avoid having this thread closed for that reason.
Thank you for your cooperation
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When I first visited SF in the late '70s, downtown, which I’ll call the area between Union Square and the Ferry Building, was a magical place - like Disneyland with all of the bright, flashing signs, cable cars going up and down hills, streetcars going up and down Market Street, restaurants, clubs, shops and crowds of people. And it smelled great - a mix of food and salt air. Over the years much of that disappeared, and downtown became a sterile forest of bland office towers with not much at street level.
But what still makes SF interesting and unique is not the downtown area. It’s out in the rest of the city, in the way the architecture blends in with the hills and water. You have walkable neighborhoods which are almost like their own, self-contained villages with homes and shopping districts separated by hills. If you get away from downtown, into the areas where people actually live, you’d hardly know there had ever been a pandemic.
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Well, I will say this. I had a rinky-dink car reserved, but when we arrived at the car rental place, they said, “I’m sorry, we are all out of rinky-dinks, but we can offer you an Audi Q5 for the same price.” “OK, I’ll take it. But just this one time.” 
After driving the same minivan for 16 years, the Q5 seemed like a spaceship. Specifically, the large, bright, beautiful navigation screen. Very easy to find our way around. The hills did scare me, though. I thought we were going to tip over backward going up one of them. 
Before we settled on an AirBnB, we looked for hotels in the city, and I would consider them very expensive. It didn’t seem like they had lowered prices out of desperation to bring in guests. I wonder if this particular hotel is the exception rather than the rule.
The Bay is so loaded with natural beauty and great weather that it will always be appealing to a lot of people. I don’t know what will happen, or what should happen with the city, but it seems certain that it will continue to evolve and somehow get past the problems of the day.
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Removing these 3000 rooms from circulation would help the hotel occupancy rate at the remaining open hotels recover from their 64% occupancy rate now. Expensive to repurpose the 2 buildings, though and it is unclear who would even consider financing such a repurpose, despite a desperate need for affordable housing. The city of SF doesn’t seem to want to step in.
It’s probably a bit early to speculate on whether or not the city wants to, or had the budget to step in, and what would be the best use of the space, if they were to get involved.
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Not really. The City takes years to do anything. If it started now, it still would be years away from approving it. UC Berkeley could really use the room for student housing-not that far away and it is on a BART line. Probably too political for Berkeley to buy the space. JP Morgan ( now the default owner) is actively looking for buyers. Price might still sink further.
Don’t think we are in a position to know what was discussed behind closed doors or what the many issues are. For that matter we don’t know whether or not the city is considering a purchase of one or the other of the buildings. I was actually wondering if they needed it as classroom space and or dorm
Space for UCSF -and the medical campuses, might have a need maybe. But those are both state schools (UCSF and Cal). For the city to get involved it would probably need to be a city U
JP Morgan is the primary owner but likely not the sole lender of record as the loan (now in default) was likely syndicated out to multiple banks. This is an entirely different animal from a retail home loan. There may also be lending tiers imbedded in the capital structure each with different claims and rights.
Frequently the lending group doesn’t share a common view on how to dispose or resolve the loan. Litigation and negotiations will take months if not years.
Inevitably as the loan dipped into arrears it worked its way through various areas of the various banks until it ultimately went from watch listed, to distressed to in default. Throughout each of these stages various scenarios would have been considered from sale, restructure to repurpose.
This process evolves slowly and with each step various “triggers” in the loan agreement become relevant. The eventual outcome and parties involved can’t be accurately speculated upon without detailed knowledge of these various details.
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I’m reading that stopping mortgage payments is a negotiating tactic to force the lender to renegotiate the loan, and the hotel owner went public about factors like “street conditions” to pressure the city to get its act together. That sounds like a very plausible explanation.
I’d bet they’ll remain as hotels. It makes more sense to convert empty office space into housing, although that’s turning out to be very expensive and difficult to do, and building owners don’t seem to be too excited about it.
Regarding UC Berkeley possibly buying the hotels or other space in SF for dorms, I would say downtown SF is too far away. UC has been trying for years to build housing a few blocks away from campus at People’s Park. It’s been blocked by a series of lawsuits, which is one of the problems with trying to build anything in California. The last lawsuit was recently thrown out, hopefully clearing the way for UC Berkeley to build, but we’ll see if there are more lawsuits.
Hilton Union Square and Parc 55 aren’t the only hotels in trouble in SF:
Hotel Owners Start to Write Off San Francisco as Business Nosedives - WSJ
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https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/map-downtown-san-francisco-buildings-18121855.php
It isn’t only hotels; the SF Chronicle reports 13 commercial buildings in downtown SF are in serious financial peril.
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When it rains, it pours. Just read that Westfield, who owns the large shopping mall in downtown SF where the closing Nordstrom is located, is walking away from the property and returning it to the lender. Westfield had announced a couple of years ago that it was going to eliminate all of its shopping mall properties in the US, but current conditions in the city sped up the process in SF.
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We have a very upscale Westfield mall near our home. When you say they are eliminating properties I assume that means they will sell them off. Our mall had a huge remodel and has added many high end stores to it recently.
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Wow—Westfield has a ton of shopping malls. We have noticed malls are less and less busy when we have been to them lately.
A few places are turning them into senior housing & senior communities.
I assume that Westfield would rather sell its properties than close them down, but I don’t remember any specific mention of how they would go about disposing of them. Just that they want to focus on their malls in Europe.
Two major tenants at Westfield SF have leases expiring this year. Combined with the Nordstrom loss, that would be a lot of empty space at that mall. Occupancy is already low there.
NYTimes had an article recently about the resurgence of the Outer Sunset neighborhood in SF.
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