San Francisco will give thousands to open pop-ups in empty downtown storefronts

San Francisco will give thousands to open pop-ups in empty downtown storefronts.

Those running the pop-ups will get three months of free rent and grants of between $3,000 and $8,000. The city aims to have the first pop-ups open this summer, per SF Standard.

The grants are funded with $710,000 from the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, which is running the program alongside nonprofit SF New Deal.

In October, Bloomberg reported the city’s office-vacancy rate reached 25.5% at the end of September, up from 20% a year earlier, according to real estate brokerage CBRE Group Inc. At the start of the pandemic, it was around 4%.

Workers have been slow to return to the city’s downtown, with weekly office utilization less than 40% of the pre-pandemic average, according to security company Kastle Systems. Office values in the San Francisco area have tumbled almost 40% on a price-per-square-foot basis from a high in December 2020, according to MSCI Real Assets.