City officials in San Francisco are planning to move their offices out of a building in crime-infested downtown.
The offices are currently in a downtown building near City Hall.
The San Francisco Standard reported Friday that the city will pull the offices due to high rent and a bad real estate market.
The outlet reported that the 11-story building in the city’s downtown area was initially leased to city and county officials back in 1999.
Over the years, it has served as office space for many municipal departments like the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, the Office of the Treasurer & Tax Collector, the Mayor’s Office of Disability, and the Department of the Environment.
Accoridn to the Standard, the San Franciscan Board of Supervisors rejected an opportunity to renew a lease agreement with the owner of the building, the nonprofit LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, in 2023
This act has placed the building into special servicing to determine whether the owner can pay off its debts amounting to a $48 million mortgage due in Jan. 2025, according to Trepp, a real estate data company.
“Losing the City as a tenant would create a great financial hardship for the Lighthouse for the Blind,” LightHouse CEO Sharon Giovinazzo told the Standard in an email.
Giovinazzo also told the outlet that the city has not yet responded to a request from LightHouse.