City College’s downtown campus at Fourth and Mission. (Amanda Bartlett/SFGATE)
City College of San Francisco is slated to close its nine-story campus downtown at the end of the spring semester, relocating courses to its six other locations, the San Francisco Chronicle first reported. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)
The 47-year-old campus is facing the loss of more than $2 million in state funding next year because it enrolls the equivalent of just 152 full-time students, falling short of the threshold of 1,000 students needed to continue receiving the money. City College Chancellor Kimberlee Messina shared the news with employees in an email on Friday, calling it a “difficult decision.” No employees will lose their jobs, and City College officials are exploring “potential partnerships with other educational institutions, community-based organizations, the city and other partners” for the 84,000-square-foot building, which opened in 1979.
SFGATE reached out to City College for more information but did not hear back by time of publication.
City College’s downtown campus is seen on Monday, March 9, 2026. (Amanda Bartlett/SFGATE)
The downtown campus at Fourth and Mission streets specializes in fashion, language and culinary classes, including its well-loved Educated Palate restaurant that previously operated out of a full-scale kitchen in the basement. More recently, students of the baking and pastry program loaded chocolate croissants, golden baguettes and other baked treats – some costing just $1 – into the space once a week for a pop-up shop that rivaled Tartine. Signs on the building currently say the program is on hiatus. Its founder and instructor Elizabeth “Betsy” Riehle is retiring after this semester, and the program will be folded into other food service classes at City College’s main Ingleside campus.
The news comes just a couple of months after the California College of the Arts announced plans to shut down its campus near Potrero Hill at the end of the 2026-2027 academic year, after which Vanderbilt University is slated to take over. At the time, CCA President David Howse cited “underlying financial challenges” the century-old institution had been working to resolve for nearly two years, including declining enrollment within its tuition-driven business model, demographic shifts and a “persistent structural deficit” on its current programs. City College is grappling with similar woes after losing 59% of its full-time students over the past decade alone as enrollment numbers fell from around 22,000 students to just over 9,000, the Chronicle reported.
A sign in the window of Educated Palate announces a hiatus of its popular pop-up. (Amanda Bartlett/SFGATE)
In its budget for the 2026 fiscal year, the community college targeted 3% enrollment growth, aiming to draw in new students through “focused recruitment and retention,” “expanded non-credit course offerings,” and “reassessment of low-enrolled classes and reallocation of resources to higher-productivity sections.”
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This article originally published at 47-year-old San Francisco college campus announces plans to close.