Among recent signs of San Francisco’s downtown revival, this one stood out: a deadline.
Planning Director Sarah Dennis-Phillips last month warned dawdling developers to hurry up and break ground on approved commercial projects, or else the city might penalize them in favor of new proposals.
After years of fear that downtown spaces would sit vacant indefinitely, the new tech boom isn’t just refilling those spaces, it’s raising expectations for new development.
But some spaces are harder to refill than others, like big empty bank buildings. San Francisco has a lot of them — more than 200 locations in SF have closed since January 2021, including 12 so far this year, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
Many of these are opulent, historic, even landmarked buildings that now sit empty, like marble-lined shells abandoned by neoclassical hermit crabs.
“They’re grand spaces that were meant to impress and intimidate,” says SF Heritage President Woody LaBounty. “It’s hard to fit things like offices and housing into them.”
Some developers are turning to other ideas: upscale eateries, bars, and event venues. These are the ideas the city needs to save old buildings from chronic emptiness.
Consider the specter of the Old U.S. Mint on Fifth Street in SoMa. The 1874 building survived the 1906 earthquake, but it stopped minting and printing in 1937. Various government offices and even the California Supreme Court considered moving in, but nothing panned out except a small museum that closed more than 30 years ago.
The city bought the Old Mint from the federal government for $1 in 2003 but has had no luck either. (At the time of the purchase Mayor Willie Brown said, “The preservation and development of this historic landmark is central to the social and economic vitality of this city.”)
The Old Mint is too big and historic to adapt to most modern uses, with the exception of the bravura annual Halloween haunt Terror Vault.
It has fallen into such disrepair that it made the National Trust For Historic Preservation’s list of most endangered historic places in 1994, and again in 2015. It’s very unusual for one building to make the list two different years, and it’s not exactly an honor.
This is the fate the city wants to avoid with other beautiful but underutilized downtown buildings. Reckless redevelopment can ruin a great site, but so can passive neglect.
Buildings this old can have hidden upkeep costs for aging plumbing and wiring and higher insurance rates. The city even offers tax breaks to some owners to offset preservation costs.
But the same preservation rules meant to save these buildings for posterity are now making it harder for one developer not just to preserve one of downtown’s grandest, but also to breathe new life into its old bones.
Empire builders
In 2019, Wells Fargo closed its branch in the ornate Crocker National Bank Building at the foot of Montgomery Street. Wells took over the circa-1908 site after buying out Crocker Bank in 1986.
The closure was part of a real estate retrenchment that led the Chronicle to herald the end of San Francisco’s “Wall Street West.”
In 2020, an SF Planning assessment said the space, featuring a coffered ceiling, Tuscan columns, and Sierra granite exteriors, was “not conducive to typical retail uses” and said the “monumental exterior” scares off potential tenants. Two years later the city landmarked it.
These days the grand old building is pretty sleepy. Literally: during The Frisc’s recent visit, a security guard was napping at his front-door post. It was hard to blame him.
But things could wake up soon. In 2025, Ghazi Shami, CEO of music label Empire, snapped up the property for just over $20 million. The local distributor-turned-global player (cemented by Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song”) plans to make the Crocker building its new HQ as well as a public event space.
The project includes turning the basement vault into a speakeasy-style bar while keeping original doors and deposit boxes. “I’ve worked on a number of bank buildings, and they lend themselves to event spaces because they’re cool and ornate,” says Eric Jacobs, a consultant on the Empire project.
Empire and architect Gensler want to replace a section of the old floor with glass to make the underground spaces visible from the lobby. They also plan to convert the old teller windows and counters into a bar. The exterior of the building, according to plans, will remain unchanged except for small details like new lights installed on outer window sills.
So far, City Hall supports the plan. But that isn’t sparing Shami from potentially costly rigamarole.
‘Stupid’ podium
The landmark status requires special approval of the plan from a series of City Hall bodies. The first hurdle: two rounds at the city’s Architectural Review Committee, which approved the plans in June.
Next up was the Historic Preservation Commission; all seven members voiced support at its July 1 meeting. They also mentioned that they’d all toured the site, some more than once (an unusual extra step), and personally reviewed the plans.
Not all landholders are created equal.
gensler architect luda hoe, noting that his client empire isn’t a typical corporate developer
Before the vote that day, a few commissioners obsessed over the removal of some interior features. It was within their purview — the Crocker building is unusual in that its landmark designation covers the interior, not just the exterior — but the degree of scrutiny began to wear on other members. “If I was the CEO of Empire, I’d be wondering why I bought this building,” said commission VP Chris Foley.
One element was a large desk, called an “officer’s podium,” that wouldn’t fit into the party space Empire plans at the site. The questions kept coming — Should the podium stay or go? Should there be a new feature to mark where the podium had been? Would the podium be preserved somewhere? If someone buys the building in the future, will they know where the podium is? — until an exasperated Foley eventually called the podium “stupid” and said the commission was “being obstructionist.”
Foley said that Shami, born and raised in San Francisco, was trying to “help the city” by rehabbing the building.
The music mogul wasn’t at the hearing, but Empire lawyer Shadi Kaileh told the commission that the project will cost more than $70 million. Kaileh added that Shami has “thought multiple times, ‘I don’t know if this is going to work.’ We don’t have endless supplies of money to keep reiterating these solutions.”
Gensler architect Luda Hoe, who is working on the project, tells The Frisc that while Empire is subject to the same process any developer would face, it isn’t a major real estate player pricing long assessments into its purchases. “Not all landholders are created equal,” Hoe says.
Despite the unanimous approval, the project must return to the Historic Preservation Commission later this year after incorporating the city’s suggested modifications.
Granted, Empire knew it was buying a historic building and the rules that come with it. But meanwhile, the building continues to sit empty. And it’s not the only one.
Up with downtown
As the hit 20th-century song says, you can always go downtown. But these days, where would you be going?
For example, the storefront vacancy rate around Union Square was more than 22 percent in the first quarter of 2026, according to commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield. In 2019, the rate was less than 5 percent.
The city has made nightlife (as well as street fairs and day-drinking) a priority in attempts to revive downtown with block parties and alcohol-friendly “entertainment zones.”
The historic Hibernia Bank Building a few blocks away is also now an event space. Another developer has similar ambitions with Wells Fargo’s former flagship and corporate museum at 420 Montgomery.
SF-based Redco bought the building last October and plans to turn the ground-floor bank space into a bar and restaurant that includes, yes, a “speakeasy-style amenity space” in the old vaults.
With a more modern cube-shaped facade, 420 Montgomery isn’t a registered landmark, and Redco has fewer hoops to jump through. But it’s still big, grandiose, and unlikely to be a bank again.
“You can’t really leave it as it is,” Redco cofounder Chris Freise tells The Frisc. “It’s a bank, but there are no branches that want to move into a space like this. These kinds of banks no longer serve a purpose,” Freise adds. (Redco previously owned the Crocker building but couldn’t pull off an office conversion there.)
Another nearby property demonstrates the limits of short-term creative re-use — also known as the pop-up. At 1 Grant Street, the 20,000-square foot former Savings Union Bank has sat empty since 2022. Before that, well, who remembers the Instagram hotspot Museum of Ice Cream (2017 to 2021) or the Lego exhibit “Art of the Brick”?
Since then, crickets. The New York firm that bought the building in 2015 recently defaulted on its loans for the property. CBRE vice president Alex Sagues, whose company is handling the building’s listing, agrees that the city can’t expect just anyone to move into buildings like these. “They typically don’t work well for office use,” Sagues tells The Frisc.
Dan Sider, SF Planning’s chief of staff, says the city is upbeat on these buildings despite the special challenges they pose. “Life finds a way,” Sider says.
But the Old Mint, with little on tap save for its annual Halloween horror show, provides a cautionary tale from the crypt. If the city wants to avoid turning these landmarks into mausoleums, they should encourage smooth sailing for the Empires of the world.
“We’re really happy Empire is moving in,” says SF Heritage’s LaBounty. “We don’t agree with everything they’re doing, but it’s good to see. The biggest problem for a historic building is if it’s boarded up.”
