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Olatoye said the DDC, in partnership with the nonprofit group SF New Deal, will help coordinate grants and affordable loans while providing an \u201cengaged referral network and expert support in one place\u201d \u2014 including from architecture firm Gensler Architects and law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP as pro-bono legal counsel.<\/p>\n
Citizens Bank and JPMorgan Chase are each contributing $10 million to the fund, while Google is also an early backer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u201cSmall businesses are the backbone of a healthy downtown, and expanding access to capital is central to Citizens\u2019 work in San Francisco,\u201d said Mark Valentino, who oversees business banking at Citizens Bank. He said the fund underscores the bank\u2019s long-term commitment to the city by helping local entrepreneurs secure the financing they need to grow and contribute to downtown\u2019s recovery.<\/p>\n
At JPMorgan Chase, executives framed the effort as part of a broader push to expand opportunity for small businesses nationwide. \u201cTogether, we can help create more resilient neighborhoods and a more prosperous city,\u201d said CEO of Chase for Business, Ben Walter.<\/p>\n
Olatoye said the moment is ripe for the support that the fund will provide, pointing to recent leasing momentum in the area: Over the past year, some 180,000 square feet of retail space has been absorbed, a reversal from the losses seen in 2023 and 2024 as major retailers like Nordstrom, Old Navy, The Gap and others abandoned their longtime storefronts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With increasing signals that some of these major retailers are planning to return to Union Square and surrounding areas \u2014 some, like Uniqlo, have already reopened in new locations \u2014 Olatoye said that the business community\u2019s \u201cconfidence\u201d in downtown is growing.<\/p>\n
\u201cDowntown is seeing real momentum, driven by the local businesses that make San Francisco special, and that momentum matters for our entire city\u2019s recovery,\u201d said Mayor Daniel Lurie in a statement, adding that the Downtown Business Fund represents the \u201ckind of collaboration is what San Francisco needs more of to make our city more vibrant for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
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What\u2019s important now is to prevent a backslide, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDowntown is responsible for 40% of the city\u2019s general fund, so we have to figure out how to not only sustain, but grow that,\u201d Olatoye said, referencing the area\u2019s business ecosystem and its outsized role in funding the city\u2019s budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you look at the research \u2014 the way that people experience retail is fundamentally changing. There\u2019s experiential retail, food and beverage, and it\u2019s no surprise that the corridor that we call the \u2018hospitality zone\u2019 is severely under-resourced for food and beverage,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That work will once again be guided by SF New Deal, the nonprofit that helped turn the city\u2019s Vacant to Vibrant concept into a pipeline for small businesses setting up shop in downtown. Under that program, SF New Deal recruited entrepreneurs, matched them with empty storefronts, and helped shepherd them through the process of opening in a struggling downtown. Now, the group is taking on a similar role with the new fund.<\/p>\n
SF New Deal Executive Director Simon Bertrang said the fund is based on lessons learned from the Vacant to Vibrant program over the past three years, which was based on the idea that with \u201ca little bit of money and some free rent, we are able to activate these turnkey spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cWith the fund, we\u2019ll be able to attract small businesses to really make a long term commitment downtown, rather than just popping up in a vacant storefront,\u201d Bertrang said. \u201cWhat we have found is that small businesses really have the flexibility, and they are risk takers, and we\u2019re able to tap into that entrepreneurial spirit to really drive a new version of what downtown could be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since its launch last year, the DDC has already emerged as a major financial engine in downtown, raising more than $60 million from backers like OpenAI, Amazon, Anthropic, Ripple Salesforce and the Emerson Collective to bankroll revitalization efforts. So far, these dollars have been deployed toward street cleaning, public space and arts activations, and continuing safety and tourist-centered initiatives like the city\u2019s downtown ambassador program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Downtown Development Corporation has announced a fund to help small businesses in downtown San Francisco, building off…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396869,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[114,60967,184,293,85,46,4674,188331],"class_list":{"0":"post-396868","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-downtown","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-entrepreneurship","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-san-francisco","15":"tag-union-square"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}