{"id":396471,"date":"2026-07-13T11:39:02","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T11:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/396471\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T11:39:02","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T11:39:02","slug":"walter-wongs-kingdom-sells-to-porn-baron-a-strange-and-terrible-saga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/396471\/","title":{"rendered":"Walter Wong’s ‘kingdom’ sells to porn baron \u2014 a strange and terrible saga"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s hard to miss CitiCenter<\/a>, a hulking 95,000 square foot structure at the corner of Mission and 13th that resembles the building on the Stolichnaya label<\/a> painted tomato red. And yet, for many years, San Francisco officials did just that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The address here is 1717 Mission St. But, also, 205 13th St. And it turns out there were many, many other addresses attached to this building. Its longtime owner, erstwhile permit expediter extraordinaire<\/a> and confessed federal criminal <\/a>Wing Lok \u201cWalter\u201d Wong, had a purported hand in that. This building housed perhaps half a dozen Wong-controlled companies that had city contracts. Rather than tip his hand by listing the same address for them all, Mission Local is told Wong simply installed a mailbox with dummy addresses \u2014 1719, 1727 and so on.<\/p>\n

That solved the problem \u2014 for Wong at least. Less so for the city: The stuff Wong\u2019s many companies sold to San Francisco was, unlike Stolichnaya<\/a>, not always of the quality fit for a czar.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s janky trash cans, for example, were provided by one of Wong\u2019s many outfits via a $5.2 million <\/a>city contract. It\u2019s hard to imagine that Wong\u2019s close ties with city officials, including since-incarcerated Public Works boss Mohammed Nuru<\/a>, weren\u2019t a factor in the process to replace these trash cans<\/a> now running longer than World War II and beginning to approximate its cost.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When the city, finally, turned its legal firepower against Wong in 2021, its settlement agreement included $387,000 <\/a>worth of trash can parts.<\/p>\n

It is difficult to overstate the influence Wong once had<\/a> in San Francisco government. He essentially ran<\/a> the Department of Building Inspection\u2019s plan-check and central permitting divisions, seeding his people within the department to handle his projects \u2014\u00a0including longtime former DBI chief Tom Hui<\/a>. He purportedly had his own keys<\/a> to DBI\u2019s offices and was seen walking behind the desk there and stamping his own paperwork.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wong was a good buddy <\/a>of multiple mayors \u2014\u00a0fatefully including Mayor Ed Lee, aka \u201c35.\u201d<\/a> Wong\u2019s building served as a campaign headquarters for a broad swath of political candidates of varying political flavors, including Mayor Willie Brown in 1999 and Matt Gonzalez just four years later. Wong provided campaigns with office space, volunteers, food, drinks, tech, phones, computers \u2014 the works. He\u2019d build and fix stuff himself. He was, in the words of one political pro, \u201ca one-stop shop.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Chronicle last week broke the news<\/a> that, after years of shopping CitiCenter around, it appears a deal has been struck: The land and structure has sold to an outfit tied to the porn baron behind Kink.com<\/a>. Mission Local has learned that people presently working in this building will be departing by July 13.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lord knows what kind of crazy things will take place on this site in the future. But, here\u2019s the thing: They won\u2019t be half as weird as what\u2019s happened here already.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"MohammedContractor and permit expediter Walter Wong, right, pictured here in 2018 with ex-Public Works boss Mohammed Nuru. Photo by Susana Bates for Drew Alitzer Photography. <\/p>\n

The first thing you\u2019d notice on dropping by CitiCenter, said an erstwhile job seeker, was the birds. You saw them, You heard them. Perhaps you even smelled them. There were cages everywhere, crammed between people\u2019s desks, mingled among the Chinese New Year decor and parade float items out in the hallway.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The birds were noisy, but Wong\u2019s employees paid them no mind. Workers answered phones, used copy machines and talked over the squawks while holding court at the water cooler. Nuru, a frequent caller here, had a purported habit of antagonizing the birds. Among those who noticed, it was not appreciated.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Visiting \u201cUncle Walter\u201d at his private penthouse lair was a bit like getting in to see the Wizard of Oz<\/a>: You needed to go through an attendant, who phoned upstairs and determined if you were welcome company or not. And then you needed keycard access to operate an elevator that took you to the exclusive fourth floor. (Did \u201cMayor 35<\/a>\u201d eventually get his own keycard? We\u2019re told he did).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Most visitors didn\u2019t go this route. Many topped off at the third floor at the greasy spoon Center Cafe. <\/a>Did this on-site restaurant in Wong\u2019s building turn a profit? Perhaps, perhaps not. But it enabled him to profit in other ways. Wong was able to provide food to many a politician\u2019s preferred charitable endeavors. He hosted an annual Christmas party for hundreds if not thousands of attendees, cramming three floors of his warehouse-sized building and tents outside with a political who\u2019s-who of guests.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CitiCenter, said one frequent attendee, was \u201cWalter\u2019s own self-sufficient kingdom.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was. And it was a kingdom built on influence, reach and relationships. Attendees recall seeing city inspectors eating at the Center Cafe, but don\u2019t recall if they paid or not. While the Department of Building Inspection says it has no information indicating that DBI archival records were once stored at Wong\u2019s CitiCenter, multiple sources tell us this in fact happened.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Additionally, this in-depth 2001 Chronicle<\/a> profile of Wong recounts that he was paid $36,000 over three years to store DBI records (and did remodeling work at the DBI office).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Building inspectors also tell us that they used to park their cars on CitiCenter-adjacent land leased by Wong. It was, for many years, an overtly cozy relationship.<\/p>\n

Wong\u2019s self-sufficient kingdom enabled him to do more than feed Chinatown seniors or throw indulgent sing-along soirees attended by damn near every politico in town (as well as hundreds of jolly tipplers). Having a restaurant on hand also enabled Wong to host frequent gatherings for his true business partners: City leaders, department heads, favored contractors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These were held at the Center Cafe and featured guests like Lee<\/a>, Nuru<\/a>, since-convicted ex-PUC GM Harlan Kelly<\/a>, since-ousted DBI boss Tom Hui<\/a>, since-convicted former Public Works employee and contractor Balmore Hernandez<\/a> and others. The crossover between frequent attendees at Wong\u2019s gatherings and people drummed out of city life and\/or incarcerated for corruption<\/a> was notably high.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

But, hey, at least the food was pretty good. Yelp reviews<\/a> for since-defunct Center Cafe are laudatory \u2014\u00a0but, also, circumspect.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI would have given it 5 stars,\u201d wrote one reviewer in 2018, \u201cbut the combination of the 82 health score and my frequent visits to the bathroom after this meal (and eating leftovers) worries me about what\u2019s going on behind the scenes.\u201d<\/p>\n

If he only knew.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"A koban resembling the one purloined from Grant Street photographed in Walter Wong\u2019s parking lot in 2005 \u2014\u00a0and, again, in 2017.<\/a><\/p>\n

Matt Gonzalez\u2019s star-crossed 2003 mayoral run remains the high-water mark for people-powered progressivism in San Francisco \u2014 there was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.<\/a> \u2026 We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Metaphysically, Gonzalez 2003 was the place in San Francisco where that wave finally broke and rolled back. Physically, that came at CitiCenter, where he had his mayoral headquarters. When Gonzalez gave his concession speech at a nearby nightclub, a heartbroken young supporter remembers wondering where all this energy would go.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sometimes, however, energy just dissipates. And the presence of the ultimate insider and fixer at the heart of even the city\u2019s most organic and genuine political campaign reveals a lot about how power works in San Francisco. Nobody would accuse Gonzalez of being corruptible or transactional, but his opponent, Gavin Newsom, had designs on reforming the Department of Building Inspection. This, in part, led Wong, as well as Residential Builders Association chieftain Joe O\u2019Donoghue<\/a>, to support the upstart Gonzalez.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Newsom did indeed move to clean house at DBI, thereby impeding Wong\u2019s free rein there.<\/p>\n

CitiCenter went on to host other political campaigns. But, absent the transcendent vibes of Gonzalez \u201903, the memories don\u2019t seem quite so magical. Politicos describe it as an oft-malodorous building (squawk!) with \u201cgross carpeting\u201d and inadequate restroom facilities. Sometimes, when the lights come on in the bar at 2 a.m., what they reveal is not fun to see.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Wong still did just fine. Within a decade of Gonzalez\u2019s defeat, Wong had his flunky installed atop <\/a>a department seeded with them<\/a>. He still operated in an exalted state: In 2005, a small police \u201ckoban<\/a>\u201d structure was yanked out of the ground in Chinatown and stolen<\/a>, sparking a lawsuit and something of a cross between a municipal scandal and a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. And yet the purloined koban sat for years, in plain view, in the yard of Wong\u2019s CitiCenter building.<\/a> Nobody did anything. Nobody made a move. \u201cIt\u2019s totally gangsterism, right?\u201d remarked one longtime city politico.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It took outside forces, namely the Feds, to move in on the City Family. When Nuru was arrested in January 2020<\/a>, Wong\u2019s offices at 1717 Mission (and 1719, 1727, etc.) were soon raided. He pleaded guilty<\/a> to fraud charges and went on to offer up his former dinner guests to the Feds on silver platters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Everyone is surprised that \u201cUncle Walter\u201d hasn\u2019t served a day in prison. But his extensive cooperation, old age and purported poor health probably have something to do with that. Regardless, he remains a free man and, per the Chronicle<\/a>, is some $14.9 million richer after unloading his erstwhile kingdom.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kink, as its name implies, is an interesting outfit. Truly bizarre acts may yet transpire on this site. But, again, nothing so bizarre as what\u2019s transpired already. And, when it comes to the city\u2019s well-being, nothing so harmful.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s hard to miss CitiCenter, a hulking 95,000 square foot structure at the corner of Mission and 13th…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-396471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}