It’s a three building office complex at the waterfront. So it has stunning views of the bay and it’s one of those buildings that’s considered a trophy building in San Francisco. So the best quality high caliber. And right, because it’s at the foot of market there, right? You’re right. It’s got a commanding presence. How much office space are we talking about? And how many people? I mean, this is not layoffs, right? They’re just putting them elsewhere or what’s happening? So correct. So given that Google has over a million square feet of office space in San Francisco, this is a small office.

It’s 300,000 square feet. But you know, in the context of what’s going on in the city, with many companies giving up space, it really adds to this vacant space that we have this lot of vacant space. So, you know, it’s a small-ish office. They’re consolidating their workforce. They have multiple other offices in the city. And that’s their plan for now. Right. Because they said, quote this from your article that they are committed to our long-term presence in San Francisco. I’m wondering how they will do that, maintain their long-term presence when they’re pulling back like this.

And I think what this shows, that’s a great question. I think what this shows is that a lot of companies are still figuring it out. So we’ve seen many companies give up space, but there are so many more like Google, one of the biggest tech companies in the world that still hasn’t quite made its decision yet of how much space will we occupy moving forward with work from home, with people not coming in at the same rate that they used to. Right. Right. Because a lot of people are still working from home, right? So you don’t need as much space.

I’ve been into that space before, by the way, and had lunch there once. It’s beautiful. Okay. So we’ll see, right, if they find another tenant, they get out what, next April, next year, they got one year to find a tenant. That’s right. So the building is still about 90% occupied, which is high. Yeah. But you know, Google lease will be a chunk of space. There’ll be vacant and pizza, which was also a huge tenant in that building has already left. They moved to Mission Rock. They’ve also given up a big block of space.

So vacancy in the building is growing. Okay. Well, a business tax overhaul could be up for a vote this November in San Francisco. And its supporters say it could bring workers back to the office, which of course is part of the problem. Right. As far as the real estate spaces, tell us what, is that a big deal? It’s a huge deal, especially for San Francisco, which has seen, you know, business taxes increase in recent years and is known to have a very complicated business tax structure. So the city right now is, you know, everyone’s kind of putting their heads together.

This is a proposal that is supported. It seems across the aisle. We’ll see, because this has just been introduced. But this should make a dent. Although some people do say it doesn’t go far enough because it does raise taxes for some of those middle-sized businesses. So the large ones will see their rates, you know, kind of spread out and decreased. And then the middle-sized businesses will see increases. What’s happening in San Francisco is what they call a doom loop. And we’ve talked about this and we’ve discussed this here on the Millionaire Morning Show as far as how a doom loop affects a city.

And we specifically referenced what was happening in St. Louis. Now I see St. Louis and I’m looking at St. Louis and I’m like, man, is St. Louis a play? Because St. Louis may be what Detroit used to be before Detroit started seeing so much investment in the boom. But I will say that we benefited from the fact that we are directly across from street from Canada. We have one of the largest bridge crossings and we got another bridge that’s being built as far as the Gordie Howe bridge in addition to the Ambassador Bridge.

And so we do a lot of commerce. We have a lot going on. We have several billionaires that has invested a lot of money here. So it’s a transition that is happening over in the city that is completely different from a completely different from what’s happening over in San Francisco. What’s happening over in San Francisco has nothing to do with geographic location that has nothing to do with, you know, whether or not it’s the weather or the people or whether or not they want to live there. I think it’s a lot of different things that’s happening that’s affecting whether or not companies want to go in in addition to whether or not companies actually are making good business decisions overall.

So here’s the thing. Companies are willing to sacrifice when it actually works out and they benefit. So for example, if they thrive in an area, if it’s a well-educated population, if they can get workers, people want to live there, live, work, and play there, then they’ll make the sacrifice, they’ll pay the additional taxes, they’ll do what they have to do, they’ll negotiate with city leaders, and then the city thrives because, you know, you bring more jobs, you bring more economic activity, people are going into the office, they then go out, they spend money, they go to lunch, they buy cars, they buy homes, property, so on and so forth, right? But here’s the difference, right? When you legislate yourself out of a situation and it turns so bad to where it’s not conducive for people to stay there in that city, it then creates what we call a doom loop.

So for example, they got soft-on crime, it’s difficult for people to be able to go in there and do business, the economy is not booming as much anymore because all the small businesses is leaving, homelessness is running rampant, people is taking dumps on the street and it doesn’t even matter. You know, you have the police, hands are tied so they can’t do anything, the mayor is not creating an environment that’s conducive for businesses, businesses are starting to fail, and so when you start to see something that happened like the pandemic in 2020-2021, companies start to reevaluate what their footprint is because less people are going into the office or they need less people to go into the office anyway.

So you need these businesses in order to create the environment that allows for the city to thrive because they depend on these tax dollars in order to continue to run it up. What you then start to see happen, even though they got great weather and a phenomenal environment that’s supposed to be thriving, is you see something that happens like the Bay Area, you see Oakland, right? All of the sports teams start to leave, the businesses start to close, people can’t go over there and buy food, you start seeing dumping, you start seeing poverty, the schools start to fall, and so it then starts to become a trickle-down effect as far as how things are affected when you’re not running the city like it’s supposed to.

It is imperative, I mean, it is imperative for there to be hand-holding between the business community, the public safety, the schools, the businesses, the political aspects of how things are supposed to be run, you have to create an environment that allows people to thrive, and that’s why conservative values and principles make more sense when you talk about large cities, even though they have more of a liberal mindset. And so these are some of the dominoes that are starting to fall. See, it’s not just about whether or not Google are consolidating, or they leave in different places, you don’t have anybody to really replace them.

And so when you start to see people decrease their footprint, slowly but surely, you see the budget start to dwindle, you see crimes start to ramp up, and then companies don’t want to be a part of it because it’s not an environment that’s conducive for businesses to thrive, people start to leave, they can’t afford the homes, it’s already out of control as far as how affordable the homes are in the first place. And so people start to move over into different places because they’re not willing to spend additional money to be in an environment that’s not even working out for them.

And that’s how you create a doom loop, ladies and gentlemen. Right, but the middle ones, I think some of the ones I’m thinking of are in retail and biotech, I mean, you want them to, I mean, that could hurt downtown, right, if they’re impacted. I imagine it’s really hard to strike that balance, right? It’s like small businesses have been struggling in the wake of the pandemic, they’re still getting back on their feet, they have a lot of debt. And the big businesses are the ones that are bringing in the huge tax dollars.

So how do we kind of keep everybody, I guess, happy and at the table? I know, that’s the struggle downtown. But meanwhile, there’s good news on the other side of the city. Nobody wants to live in the Bay Area, big dog, Eric, Eric Daniels. No, absolutely not. The A’s left. Everybody’s leaving. They don’t even have a sports team anymore. All of the sports teams left in and out. Everything is leaving. Man, listen, Keith Lee wouldn’t even do a review over there. Now, you know, it’s bad when Keith Lee won’t even show up. No, no.

Listen, it’s bad. It’s bad over there, bro. The west side right around Stonestown Mall. Exciting stuff happening there. Tell us about it. Glad you brought that up. It’s nice to talk about good news in the city. So there’s actually a retail center on the south side of San Francisco that’s not only flourishing, but will also move ahead as a redevelopment plan. So tomorrow, the Planning Commission is voting on the Stonestown Mall redevelopment by Brookfield. And that plan is to bring over 2,000 new homes to the Stonestown Mall, redevelop it, make it kind of an open air retail plaza, you know, with housing and transit and everything.

And that’s one of the very few mega projects that’s actually moving forward in the wake of the pandemic. Yeah, that area is hopping. Look, we have 20 more seconds, so we don’t really have time to get into. I know you also reported on something exciting in Hayes Valley, a multi-generational tech campus. We’ll talk about that another time. But Laura Waxman, it’s always great to have you on. You always got great information for us. Thanks for having me. So just be wary if you are over in the San Francisco area that there’s a lot going on and Google is decreasing its footprint, which I think is a sign of things to come.

I think that companies are starting to pull out of areas because they don’t even need that large of a footprint. And so the first place that they’re gonna leave is places that’s not ideal for their corporate culture or environment, or it’s not best, you know, for what it is that they’re doing on their bottom line and not willing to sacrifice anymore. So that’s just a couple of little thoughts of what was going on over there with Google. [tr:trw].

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