Downtown L.A. needs retail resuscitation. San Francisco's subsidized shops offer a solution

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As much of downtown L.A.continues to feel dark and deserted, local businesses want the city to steal San Francisco’s secret for firing up foot traffic.The tech mecca has slowly begun to emerge from one of the country’s deepest declines in downtown retail, in part through a program that peppered the city with subsidized pop-up shops.

The Vacant to Vibrant program turned abandoned spaces into bakeries, bookstores, cafes, chocolateries, galleries and other things.Local entrepreneurs were given grants and support from the city and charities, as well as months of free rent to set up shop.

The idea is to leverage empty storefronts to build buzz and entice more shoppers to city sidewalks.While San Francisco is still far from its pre-pandemic peaks, backers say the program has brightened struggling retail areas.

“We’re creating a window on what downtown could look like,” said Simon Bertrang, executive director of SF New Deal, the nonprofit behind Vacant to Vibrant.The hollowing-out created by COVID-19 could be an opportunity to turn downtown San Francisco into a “mixed-use neighborhood with a lot of small businesses and maybe more residential,” he said.Both L.A.

and S.F.have grappled with keeping stores and restaurants in their business districts since the pandemic emptied office buildings.

While most employees are working from the office again, a significant number are still working from home, and many aren’t coming in every weekday.The diminished presence of workers continues to make it hard on the lunch spots, bars and shops that rely on them to survive.Though it is difficult to compare how businesses are doing in each downtown, there are some indicators that San Francisco has been growing more in the last year.

Reservation platform OpenTable said online reservations in the Northern Californian city shot up more than 20% compared with most months last year.Reserv...