Breed said at a City Hall news conference the economic impact figure accounted for how APEC will affect spending at hotels, restaurants and other businesses. The event is expected to draw more than 20,000 people, including President Biden and high-ranking officials from 21 world economies, when it gets under way the week of Nov. 12.
Because of the event’s significance, the federal government is implementing strict security measures, particularly around Moscone Center, where many of the meetings related to APEC will take place. The planned closures of streets and public transit, along with airport-style security checkpoints for residents and employees in the affected areas, have drawn pushback from some small businesses and the representatives of several senior housing complexes.
But Breed thinks APEC will have a positive influence on the city overall, marking its biggest moment in the international spotlight since the founding of the United Nations in 1945. The event comes at a critical moment for the city, which is facing a glut of empty downtown offices and an exodus of retailers from its premiere shopping district as remote work remains popular among large local employers and tourism has been slow to rebound from the pandemic.
“APEC will put us on center stage like never before,” Breed told reporters. “We’ll have an opportunity to showcase the very best of this city.”
Breed said San Francisco officials would not be “hiding our problems” and would continue their efforts to improve the city’s seemingly intractable issues of widespread homelessness, open-air drug scenes and property crime. She also said the city was trying to offset the impacts of the security zones mandated by the Secret Service.
“Ultimately, the Secret Service is making this decision for the protection of many of the leaders that are visiting,” Breed said. “We want to make sure that things are safe, but we also want to make sure that they are successful and our businesses thrive and the folks who live in these areas, especially our seniors, are not significantly impacted.”
Breed’s comments came after affordable housing owner TODCO wrote a letter Monday to San Francisco supervisors saying the city had “done no proper planning at all” to understand the needs required by seniors living in eight residences around Yerba Buena Center. TODCO President John Elberling wrote in his letter that “no one has reached out to us in recent months” and called the city’s handling of the matter “totally inept.”
The mayor told reporters that the city couldn’t reach out to specific neighborhoods until after federal officials announced the exact street and transit closures, which happened last week. Now, she said, the city is reaching out to residents and businesses using a “door to door approach” to understand their concerns and figure out ways the city can help. While San Francisco can’t change the boundaries of the security zones, the city is working to make sure that seniors who live there can still access paratransit services, Breed said.
Supervisor Connie Chan and two of her colleagues, Supervisors Hillary Ronen and Dean Preston, sponsored a resolution urging Breed to lessen the impacts of the APEC security measures by tapping into some of the $10 million in public funds that she previously set aside to help cover the city’s logistical costs. The resolution, which supervisors were set to consider at their meeting Tuesday, said Breed should use some of that money to cover some of the losses that local businesses and their workers may experience as a result of the APEC security measures.
Local organizers who supported the resolution said APEC would be harmful to low-income people who would face difficulty getting to their jobs or going about their daily lives in the security zones.
“They’re trying to bill it as this game-changer event and it’s not,” Kim Tavaglione, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council, told supervisors at their meeting. “It is all aimed at the corporations making a lot of money at this thing at the expense of the citizens of San Francisco.”
Breed said the city first needs to “make sure our bills are paid,” noting that San Francisco would have to fund a heavy law enforcement presence during the event. The city is also getting help from members of outside law enforcement agencies and “will have a responsibility to ensure that all of those people have a place to stay while they’re in San Francisco,” she said.
The mayor was receptive to the idea of helping businesses affected by the security zones in some way but said she wants to see how the event plays out before making any decisions, expressing hope that at least some merchants who are able to keep their doors open might get good business from APEC attendees.
“We have to see what happens with APEC and the number of people that are there before we draw any conclusions,” Breed said. “But we are definitely open to working things out to support our various businesses in the area.”
Reach J.D. Morris: jd.morris@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @thejdmorris
