With major development and booming tourism, the S.F. waterfront has turned into a huge economic driver for the city. Port of San Francisco executive director Monique Moyer caught attendees up at Bisnow's Future of the San Francisco Waterfront event yesterday with the latest numbers.
In the past two decades, $1.6B in public and private investment has spurred 1M SF of new development with another nearly 7M SF pending. The overall port portfolio is 20M SF, so 7M of new development will add almost a third. And she loves this part: there will be 64 acres of waterfront open space. The Ferry Building houses eight office tenants, farmers markets, 49 shops and almost 500 employees.
Monique says the waterfront keeps dominating the ballot year after year—sometimes for better and lots of times for worse. Now 152 years old, it's crazy to think people sailed in with good old-fashioned wind-powered ships, she says. The great seawall survived two world wars and major earthquakes.
The tourism rate along the waterfront is astounding; the portion of Fisherman's Wharf to AT&T Ballpark now welcomes 24 million visitors; that is along the lines of Disneyland; and you don't see cops roaming and it's a "frenzy, fun, crazy" environment, Monique says. It's time for waterfront transportation to make a resurgence, she says, particularly south to north. One important note is the 130-year-old seawall, which is rising.
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