00:00Retail is making a comeback in San Francisco's Union Square.
00:03The square has long been the jewel at the heart of the city's commercial district,
00:08and for many decades it featured a large number of high-end retail stores
00:11and flagship locations for national and global brands.
00:15The square also takes advantage of its location near the start of the famous cable car in San Francisco.
00:21It's near Market Street and the tram cars that go to the Embarcadero and Fisherman's Wharf.
00:25But over the past decade, Union Square has really struggled.
00:29For one thing, the city developed a major homelessness problem.
00:32And then during the pandemic, Governor Gavin Newsom shut the economy down completely.
00:36Shoppers were forced to stay at home, stores were forced to close.
00:39And as the city just started to come back out of the pandemic, a new threat arrived,
00:44the phenomenon of mass looting, where mobs would show up at major retail stores and just ransack them.
00:50Retailers couldn't get out of Union Square quickly enough.
00:53Some simply abandoned their leases or went into foreclosure.
00:56And it seemed like Union Square had gone into a terminal decline.
01:00But last year, San Francisco saw a new mayor take office, Daniel Lurie,
01:05and he started enforcing laws and moving the city in a more centrist direction.
01:11On homelessness, for example, he abandoned the failing policy of housing first,
01:15and he adopted a policy of insisting on a treatment first approach.
01:20That is, homeless people had to commit to some process of drug treatment or mental health counseling
01:26in order to get housing and benefits.
01:28That seems to have helped, as well as the mayor's talking up the business opportunities in the city.
01:32And it certainly didn't hurt that the boom in artificial intelligence, or AI,
01:36helped the city and the Bay Area generally recover economically.
01:40Retailers are coming back with one making a $75 million investment in Union Square,
01:44and it is a sign of what is possible with the right policies and new leadership.
01:50Who knows?
01:50Maybe even LA can turn around, and the rest of California's retail sector as well.
