Can you feel it? SF’s finally back, baby — at least according to our newly-minted Mayor Daniel Lurie.
Lurie, alongside NBA champion and former Warriors center Festus Ezeli, kicked off the beginning of All-Star weekend Thursday morning with a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the newly-unveiled All-Star Alley in the heart of Union Square.
“There is a lot of talk out there,” Lurie said at the presser. “The national media, international media, who has not been to San Francisco. They don’t know what they’re about to see. They are about to see a city on the rise, a city with great food, great arts, great entertainment, the best people in the world.”
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver was scheduled to attend the presser but NBA Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum filled in for him, maybe because Silver was too scared to show his face after, in my opinion, referees low-key robbed the Warriors of a win last night.
Tatum, at the presser, said the goal with All-Star Alley was to create a “branded destination” for fans and to showcase the city of San Francisco.
The game is expected to be a boon for the city’s economy, San Francisco’s chief economist Ted Egan previously told Gazetteer SF. He said the volume of visitors would be “a fairly big deal.” The game is expected to bring 135,000 visitors and $350 million to the Bay Area as a whole.
Lurie acknowledged at the event that the city still has its problems, as evidenced by his recently-approved emergency ordinance around fentanyl. Plus, November’s economic impact report showed a drop in new restaurants and retail stores in San Francisco, as well as a dip in hotel occupancy rates post-Dreamforce.
But he said “we are clear-eyed” about those challenges, saying it’s possible to address them while also celebrating and showing off what the city has to offer.
“San Francisco is coming back and it’s just the beginning this weekend,” Lurie said. “We got Super Bowl LX next year, we got World Cup. We got a lot to look forward to.”
As part of All-Star Weekend, a number of stores from NBA partners like American Express, Bleacher Report, Foot Locker, and Puma have opened pop-up shops in vacant storefronts throughout Union Square.
Marisa Rodriguez, executive director of the Union Square Alliance, was very, very excited about what she was seeing, exclaiming, “Look at Powell Street! Are we feeling this energy?”
“Look at what [Union Square] can look like and feel like with just a little investment,” she said.
“Tell your friends we are back,” Rodriguez added. “We are back and we are in the game.”
Check out Gazetteer SF’s additional All-Star Game coverage below
Business owners expect the All-Star game to be ‘bonkers,’ but in a good way
In the NBA, at least, diversity and inclusion efforts are alive and well
