Officials Considering University of California Campus in Downtown San Francisco

Students walk through Sproul Plaza on the University of California–Berkeley campus in Berkeley, Calif., on April 23, 2012. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Downtown San Francisco could be the home of the newest University of California (UC) campus.

San Francsico Mayor London Breed asked leaders of the UC system—which currently has 10 campuses across the state—to consider launching a new campus in the city’s downtown area last May.

Now, the system is “exploring opportunities to advance their research, public service, and education mission through an expanded presence in San Francisco,” a UC official confirmed to the San Francisco Chronicle Jan. 13, adding that UC officials met the day before to discuss the possibility.

“While we cannot discuss details of the conversations currently underway, as a powerful economic driver for the state, the University is committed to strategies that invigorate local economies and offer exciting educational and research opportunities for UC students and faculty,” the official said, according to the Chronicle.

In response, Ms. Breed posted on X, formerly Twitter, that “bringing a University like UC to our Downtown is a win-win.”

“There is room for student housing, classrooms, lab spaces, and more,” she wrote in a Jan. 13 post. “San Francisco is the center for innovation, and students can be part of the world-changing ideas we are creating here.”

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Though it’s unclear which locations Ms. Breed and the system are considering, the city’s former Westfield San Francisco Centre mall is currently sitting vacant, as is more than one-third of the city’s offices due to increasing remote work after the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Chronicle.

In her May letter to UC’s regents, Ms. Breed also said she hoped a UC campus would revitalize the city’s downtown by bringing more job opportunities to the area and customers to businesses.

“Bringing students into the heart of San Francisco affords a set of remarkable opportunities,” Ms. Breed wrote in the letter, adding that the move would give students access to “a vibrant and world class metropolitan center, and could also serve to alleviate some of your critical student housing shortfalls at both UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco.”