Rookie investors who bought up crime-plagued Union Square buildings spark $75 million retail revival under San Francisco crackdown

“SAN FRANCISCO IS NOT DEAD, AND WE BOUGHT WHEN NOBODY ELSE WOULD”!!! BELIEVE IT OR NOT, AUTHORITIES SAY PRIVATE INVESTORS DEPLOYED 75 MILLION DOLLARS INTO UNION SQUARE AS MAYOR DANIEL LURIE TOOK OFFICE… AND MAJOR RETAILERS ARE RETURNING DOWNTOWN.

Just two years ago, downtown San Francisco’s commercial real estate sat in a grim position.

Retailers had fled the area in large numbers.

Empty storefronts turned Union Square, once considered the city’s crown jewel, into a state of disrepair.

Open-air drug markets, homeless individuals described as zombies, and crime pushed customers away from the district.

Homeless people on the corner of Powell and Market Streets had been a common sight downtown for decades.

Luxury storefronts boarded up their windows or moved out of the shopping corridor completely.

In 2024, downtown office real estate sales slumped to an average of $310 per square foot, according to CBRE.

That figure fell almost two-thirds below the average of $861 per square foot recorded in 2018.

Yet Union Square’s fortunes are now in the process of a dramatic reversal.

The shift has been credited to good governance and private investment.

“It’s really a full gut remodel of Union Square… We’re going to have fresh brands in every door,” said Julie Taylor, the realtor used to purchase property.

Clothing brand Uniqlo, which left Union Square in 2021, has signed a lease and is set to reopen later this year.

Zara is preparing to expand into a four-story, 40,000-square-foot flagship location.

Those retailers will join a Nintendo store that has commanded lines around the block.

Other tenants in the area include The RealReal, Aritzia, Pop Mart, and AT&T.

Kith has signed a lease in the district.

Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s are also reported to be eyeing retail space.

In the middle of that turnaround is Uris Acquisitions, a nascent investment firm.

The firm is helmed by 36-year-old Max Raskin and 49-year-old Ian Jacobs.

The pair began acquiring real estate just months after Mayor Daniel Lurie took office in January 2025.

Their conviction was that San Francisco was not dead, but struggling with problems they believed Lurie could rapidly fix.

They began raising capital ahead of Lurie’s mayoral campaign.

The partners have deployed almost all of that capital, totaling $75 million, over the course of the last 15 months.

“Forget blood in the streets,” Raskin joked in reference to a popular investment maxim.

“We bought when there was feces in the street,” Raskin added.

Jacobs comes from a family of real estate investors.

He initially focused on finance at Goldman Sachs before working as an analyst for Warren Buffett after writing him a fan letter.

Raskin worked as a journalist at Bloomberg and Morgan Stanley before attending law school and later working at the Treasury Department.

Raskin maintained a belief that the greatest cities in the world always make a comeback.

Although Raskin now only writes occasionally, he first met Lurie while interviewing him for a story.

Their relationship with Lurie has proven key to their business strategy.

“It is a public-private partnership,” Raskin explained.

“I talk to the mayor quite frequently, and it’s just, ‘Hey, what can we do to help out?’” Raskin said.

The window of steep commercial discounts may now be starting to close.

The property at 200 Powell, which Uris bought for $7.4 million last year, would have sold for nearly $40 million at its previous peak.

“It’s not rocket science,” Raskin said regarding the effort to clean up San Francisco.

“It just takes a lot of willpower… You just arrest the criminals and you don’t give them drugs,” Raskin stated.

Mayor Lurie has outlined a similar approach to downtown recovery.

“If we make the streets safe and clean, people will want to be here,” Lurie said.

“When people don’t feel safe, nothing else matters,” Lurie added.

“Government needs to do its job, which is providing the basics,” Lurie noted.

“If we provide the basics, the city can sell itself,” Lurie stated.

Lurie has engaged with other corporate leaders alongside real estate buyers.

When Jamie Dimon visited the city for JPMorgan’s 2025 annual healthcare conference, Lurie invited him to City Hall.

The visit marked Dimon’s first time inside the municipal building.

In 2021, The Post reported executives were pleading with JPMorgan to cancel that same healthcare conference due to out-of-control crime.

Then JPMorgan announced plans to expand its local office presence.

The financial institution is making San Francisco its 24th corporate center.

JPMorgan is also investing $200 million into a waterfront housing project.

Outreach to business leaders has coincided with local administrative reforms.

The mayor implemented measures to make building permits far easier to obtain after past processes stood in the way of development.

“Retailers have been dating San Francisco, waiting to fall in love again… waiting for an indication that the time was right and that the frog had turned back into a prince,” Taylor joked.

Since early 2025, Uris has acquired five commercial buildings in and around Union Square.

The firm’s purchases include 200 Powell, 35 Powell, and 71 Powell.

The portfolio also includes 120 Maiden Lane and 233 Grant.

The firm is currently under contract to purchase two additional buildings in Union Square.

Challenges still persist downtown with homelessness, crime, and residents who remain wary of change.

While Uris bet that effective government could resolve major municipal problems, no guarantee exists that this style of governance will endure.

But Raskin maintains that his optimism and positivity have guided the firm’s approach.

“We didn’t know it was going to be the AI boom, but we knew something was going to boom… We just bet on people,” Raskin said.

“We bet on smart people, and we bet on cities,” Raskin added.

They made the bet.

They bought the properties.

They deployed the capital.