(Daily Mail) A luxury Four Seasons apartment high rise located steps from San Francisco’s notorious open-air drug market has sold just 13 of its 146 units in the two years since the building opened.
The Tower Residences, which features a $49million penthouse, views of the San Francisco Bay, and a host of amenities – including a car elevator – is located smack in the middle of the Tenderloin and SoMa neighborhoods, which have become the epicenters of the beleaguered city’s crime and drug problems.
It sits just four blocks from San Francisco’s infamous Tenderloin Linkage Center.
The city-run facility was set up earlier this year to try and help homeless drug abusers, but has since descended into what locals say is effectively legal drug abuse.
They complain the center has destroyed their quality of life, and send associated crime spilling out onto downtown San Francisco’s streets, which remain eerily deserted as most locals continue to work from home.
The last sale at the apartment building was on June 1, according to the San Francisco Business Times, meaning there wasn’t a single deal in all of 2022’s third quarter.
The building opened up its units for presale in 2020 after four years of construction at an estimated $500million price tag.
The building offers 24-hour concierge service, touts ‘rare inner circle access’ to events San Francisco’s art scene and California’s wine scene, and has an entire floor called ‘The Club,’ which includes a bar, a dining room, a fitness center, and event spaces.
The units themselves are ‘sized like grand estate homes,’ according to architect Glenn Rescalvo, who said ‘you feel like you’re hovering above the gardens’ in an interview.
Each unit takes up an entire floor, and features full luxury appointments, and corners living rooms with glass on two sides.
One prominent buyer poised to pick up an apartment was NBA player Stephen Curry, who with his wife Ayesha reportedly signed for an $8million 2,800-square-foot 30th-floor condo in 2020.
But as of October, not one of the 13 sales at the Tower Residences lists the Currys’ name or LLCs associated with them, according to the Business Journal, suggesting the basketball star abandoned his plans to move into the building.
It is unclear exactly why the rich have turned away from the Tower Residences, but major crimes in San Francisco are up 7.4 percent from the same period last year, assaults are up 11.1 percent and robberies are up 5.2 percent, with much of that nefarious activity taking place in the blocks surrounding the building.
The luxury Four Seasons apartment tower the Tower Residences has sold just 13 of its 146 units in the two years since it opened
One prominent buyer to pick up an apartment at the Tower Residences was NBA player Stephen Curry, who with his wife Ayesha reportedly signed for an $8million 2,800-square-foot 30th-floor condo in 2020. But by fall 2022 his name did not appear on the any of the sales at the building
Both the Tenderloin and SoMa neighborhoods are home to a pair of drug treatment facilities opened by San Francisco, which locals complain have done little more than attract scores of dangerous addicts to the streets.
The Tenderloin Linkage Center was opened in January 2022 with the intent of helping the city’s homeless population and drug addicts to find help.
But the center, which pays $75,000 a month in rent and costs about $19million to run, announced it will be closing at the end of the year after failing to curtail the problem in the crime-ridden city.
Critics noted that only 0.1 percent of people who visited the center for help were directed to treatment in the first five months. Between January and April, just 18 of the 23,367 drug users who visited the site were referred for treatment.
And a prominent feature of the Linkage Center was providing a ‘safe space’ for users to shoot up, which critics say did little to solve anything.
Instead of treating the problem, the center transformed into an open-air drug market, with users camped out inside the center and on the surrounding streets, shooting up freely in the open passing out where they sat.
And down the road in SoMa, residents say they are arming themselves with baseball bats and stun guns after a newly-opened drug sobering facility drew violent addicts to a previously peaceful neighborhood.
Neighborhood locals are voicing outrage, saying ever since the SoMa RISE drug sobering center opened in June, ‘troublemakers’ have plagued the neighborhood.
Residents told Fox News that rather than tempering drug usage, the center has done little more than draw heavy users to the neighborhood.
With those users comes crime, residents said, which casts a pall of danger over the neighborhood.
The center was opened with the help of Democratic San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who characterized it as a safe haven for addicts looking to get back on their feet.
Mayor Breed’s office characterized SoMa as a ‘safe indoor space’ for addicts to ‘get off the streets’ and regather themselves and ‘stabilize.’
But SoMa resident and business owner Mark Sackett said things were not playing out nearly as the city intended.
‘They’re letting their clients come out here and get high, go inside and get sober and then get high again,’ Sackett told ABC7.
The Tower Residences is located smack in the middle of the Tenderloin and SoMa neighborhoods, which have become the epicenters of the beleaguered city’s crime and drug problems
The building opened up its units for presale in 2020 after four years of construction at an estimated $500million price tag
The apartment building features a $49million penthouse, views of the San Francisco Bay, and a host of amenities , including a car elevator
Another resident, only identified as Ghis, gave a similar account to ABC7.
‘More troublemakers settling in, feeling comfortable doing their drugs, pissing and s****ting in the street blocking the sidewalks,’ Ghis said, adding the neighborhood was going through ‘a period of insanity.
Another local named Bill said the trouble started when the center opened, and that ever since he has wondered whether he was in danger every time he left home to go to work.
‘Every morning it’s a roulette. When you show up at your office, are there going to be 10 people passed out in front of your building?’ he said. ‘Are they going to be violent? This was never a problem before HealthRight 360 moved in.’
‘If you ask me, it should be closed down and there should be other approaches to the homeless and drug problem we’re all facing,’ Bill added.
Both the Tenderloin and SoMa neighborhoods are home to a pair of drug treatment facilities opened by San Francisco, which locals complain have done little more than attract scores of dangerous addicts to the streets
Both the Tenderloin and SoMa neighborhoods are home to a pair of drug treatment facilities opened by San Francisco, which locals complain have done little more than attract scores of dangerous addicts to the streets
