Will Lurie Help Revitalize Construction in the City?

Cleaning Up SF’s Streets Is the First Step

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie is determined to revitalize downtown — and the City’s building trades will have a big part to play in that. But first, some key elements must be addressed, according to Larry Mazzola Jr., president of the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council.

“Businesses and conventions won’t come around if they feel unsafe, so we have to deal with that,” Mazzola said. “That’s step No. 1, and [Lurie] is making moves on that already.”

Last month, Lurie signed legislation allowing his office to forego the typically lengthy SF Board of Supervisors approval process for projects related to homelessness, public safety, and the drug crisis. He’s converting a vacant Tenderloin retail space at 822 Geary Street into a behavioral health crisis center. The building was initially to be established as a supervised drug-use site, but now the space will be a crisis stabilization unit. The building is slated to be used by a nonprofit group that will provide around- the-clock care and operations for people in need.

Then-mayoral-candidate Daniel Lurie addresses members of the SF Building Trades Council during a forum hosted by the trades last July.

To address crime in downtown SF, the mayor launched a “hospitality zone task force” designed to cover the City’s major shopping and hotel corridors at the Moscone Center, San Francisco Centre, Yerba Buena Gardens, and Union Square. The aim is to improve the sense of safety for visitors, shoppers, and convention-goers by deploying teams of police officers in the zones.

“Downtown’s public safety challenges have hurt our economy, our businesses, and our workers,” Lurie said. “It has also hurt the morale of our city. But it is a new day in San Francisco, and we are ready to face our challenges head-on, with a hyper-focus on results.”

Mazzola hopes that those results translate into more building trades work.

“Before Covid, there were around 40 cranes in the air, and now, it’s like six,” he said. “There’s just nothing happening. I think Lurie is setting the table for more construction work.”

The SF Building Trades Council continues to talk to supervisors and the mayor about getting construction back. The mayor said it’s one of his priorities, according to Mazzola.

“It’s going to take some time, but I’m happy with what I’ve seen so far — as long as [Lurie] remains communicative with labor along the way, which he’s promised to do,” Mazzola said.

Mazzola acknowledged the fact that the council and the mayor’s office won’t agree all the time, but as long as there’s an open line of communication, he said, he’s cautiously optimistic that the industry will start turning around. He projects an uptick in work around the third or fourth quarter this year, especially as permits are being accelerated.

“We’re watching expedited permitting,” Mazzola said. “We want to expedite them, but not to the point that we forget workers’ rights. We still want to support the working class.”

Mazzola also pointed out that construction in San Francisco has been slow for a while, and that’s unlikely to change overnight. At the same time, San Francisco is clearly open for business and signs are pointing toward improvement, he said.