The last 2 weeks have seen an uptick in both Bart ridership and traffic. Bart ridership was up to 29% of pre-pandemic levels through the end of April, and has jumped these past 2 weeks up to 35%. Weekends are closer to pre-pandemic levels — even touching 60% (5/7/22) of pre-pandemic levels. Yesterday, for example, 142,598 people took BART, and a typical baseline for the system in May is 413,700. Bart does still have a mask mandate in effect until July 18, 2022.
Ferry ridership hit was at 259,460 folks in March of 2019 and the ridership numbers for March 2022 were 94,436, up from 74,227 in February. The pandemic low was January 2021 with 40,789.
The recovery of commuters seems to be in motion — albeit a slow trickle.
Our team collected 34 lease comps throughout the market this past week for office space signed between February and today’s date. The flight to quality trend remains in full force, as 27 of them were for Class A space, many short term, and Soma, South Financial, then North Financial are the most active markets. There is still much tire kicking to be seen throughout the market, but we are now seeing meaningful deals get closed. Certainly uncharted waters lie ahead, but San Francisco has historically rebounded in the worst of times far more quickly than the rest of the nation, let’s hope that history rhymes with reality.
The CEOs and employees I interact with in the tech community are finding themselves in a bit of a bind for physical office planning. CEOs want physical space to foster community/comradery/idea sharing & employee mentorship, but valuations have tumbled over the past week, raising future venture rounds has become much more difficult, many have positions to fill, and qualified employees can demand remote work. They’ve worked remote for 2 years and now need to batten down the hatches on burn rates.
Warriors playoff games and Giants games, along with cultural experiences are seemingly back to normal.
No need for an office/life science broker to be commenting on the broader markets this week, other than to say, when people lose money in the metaverse, it turns out they lose money in real life as well and the lack of baby formula on the shelves at the same time women are being forced into childbirth seems a bit too on the nose. Inflation numbers remain high and growth is slowing, but employment numbers and wages remain steady.
Lastly — I’m hopeful this graph spells out for us the week we just lived through:
Take care and be well.
