Evidence through late 2025 shows that San Francisco’s SoMa/downtown core has not been successfully revitalized as a dense office/commuter district, and city leadership has largely shifted away from that goal.

Key points:

• Office vacancy in San Francisco’s downtown reached record levels around 36% by late 2023 and was still roughly one‑third vacant in 2025, far above pre‑pandemic levels and among the worst recoveries in North America. (hotair.com)
• As of Q2 2025, the downtown core’s total office vacancy rate was about 35.1%, with only a very slight quarter‑to‑quarter improvement—hardly consistent with a “successfully revitalized” dense office district. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Mayor London Breed herself acknowledged in 2023 that “San Francisco’s Downtown as we know it is not coming back,” and her roadmap focuses on tax breaks, rezoning, arts/entertainment, and attracting new industries rather than restoring the old commuter‑office model. (sfstandard.com)
• In Central SoMa—explicitly planned pre‑COVID for roughly 8 million square feet of new office space—a 2025 city study notes that the shift to remote work has stalled office projects, leaving about one‑third of existing office space vacant and concluding that new office development is “unlikely to be profitable.” The city is now proposing to waive commercial requirements to make more housing feasible, effectively retreating from the original dense‑office vision. (sfchronicle.com)
• City fiscal projections expect downtown office property values to remain far below pre‑pandemic levels and not fully recover until after 2034, reinforcing that a quick or straightforward office‑district revitalization has failed. (sfchronicle.com)

There are modest green shoots—AI firms leasing space, programs like Vacant to Vibrant, and some retail revival—but these amount to partial, mixed‑use adaptation rather than a restoration of SoMa/downtown as a thriving, dense office/commuter hub powered by the mayor’s 2022‑era plans. On the prediction as normalized (“it will not be successfully revitalized as that kind of district in the foreseeable future; current plans will fail”), the available evidence to date aligns with Jason’s view.