SAN FRANCISCO—Mayor Daniel Lurie is inviting chief executive officers, bankers, and billionaires to partner with the San Francisco in civic matters and help revive the city’s beleaguered economy.
Lurie is planning two separate initiatives, initially reported on by The San Francisco Standard, that echo two different successful models that New York City has used in the past.
The first initiative, the Partnership for San Francisco, is a group of 26 corporate leaders who will serve as an advisory council to help economically revitalize the city. The members include OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, San Francisco Giants CEO Larry Baer, Salesforce co-founder Parker Harris, and DoorDash CEO Tony Xu.
The council will discuss with public officials ways to improve the city’s safety, economy, and downtown area, Katherine August-deWilde, the president of the group, told The Chronicle.
August-deWilde, 77, is the former vice chair of First Republic Bank and currently acts as an independent corporate board member of Tipping Point, a nonprofit poverty alleviation organization Lurie founded two decades ago.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, San Francisco has faced the impact of an exodus of residents as well as businesses, such as high-end retailers and supermarkets. New York City dealt with similar challenges in the 1970s when more than a million mostly middle-class residents left.
The idea behind the Partnership for San Francisco stems from David Rockefeller’s vision in 1979, a new partnership that would allow business leaders to work directly with the government to address social and economic problems. That collaboration contributed to the renaissance of Harlem, the South Bronx, North Brooklyn, Jamaica, and Queens.
August-deWilde and the two co-chairs of the group, philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs and Alphabet President Ruth Porat, all own homes in San Francisco and have barely been involved in governmental matters before.
The second initiative, a public-private entity called the San Francisco Downtown Development Corp., will combine public taxpayer money and private funds to invest in various efforts to revitalize the downtown area.
That initiative was modeled after the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. in New York after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The two new groups are expected to endure after Lurie’s tenure, as their New York counterparts have done.
