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Originally Posted by destroycreate
It for sure had something to do with it. Even by March 2021, SD defied the bans on indoor dining and restaurants were hosting indoor dining while cops turned a blind eye. I remember restaurants in the Gaslamp, Coronado etc. were busy with patrons. People were going to gyms, a lot of bars were open (granted with seating being distanced). My SF friends would state how proud they were at not having gone to a restaurant for a whole year, just for comparison's sake.
Let's just be honest--the most liberal and progressive cities shot themselves in the foot, whereas the more red/conservative cities got back to normal way faster and are thriving now.
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San Diego is by no means a conservative city any longer. We have a Democratic mayor and the City Council now has 9 Democrats and 0 Republicans. And I don't recall San Diego being a Florida-like refuge from Covid restrictions during the pandemic. Things got shut down in San Diego just as they did elsewhere in California in late 2020 and early 2021 during the height of the Delta Covid surge. Gyms were closed, restaurants were closed, just as they were in other areas of the state with extensive Covid spread. In-person learning in the San Diego city schools restarted about the same time as it did in the LA schools. In general, the State of California determined the schedule for reopening on a county-wide basis depending on the reduction in new Covid cases. Were the police turning a blind eye to restaurants that stayed open despite the order to shut down? I suppose that's possible, but it may have more to do with San Diego's very small police force not having the personnel available to do comprehensive enforcement. But I don't recall seeing any open restaurants or bars in my neighborhood at the height of the Delta surge.
I agree that the article is a bit disingenuous in claiming that Downtown's San Diego relatively quick recovery from Covid is due to civic foresight. If you don't have a lot of downtown office jobs to begin with, the shift to work from home is going to have less of an impact. San Diego city leaders have traditionally sought to bolster tourism and entertainment downtown with investments in the Padres ballpark and an ever expanding convention center. They've done much less to encourage other kinds of employment. It's only recently that there has been much movement on bringing tech jobs downtown. There are a lot of people who live downtown and commute to tech and other white collar jobs in the northern part of the city. It would make sense to have more of those kinds of jobs downtown so people didn't need to make the long commute on the 5 or 805 freeways.
The article also talks about a diverse downtown economy based on tourism, entertainment, education and healthcare. I'm wondering what they have in mind for education and healthcare employment, apart from the community college and a very small law school. I think that the original assessment that the article has a lot of fluff is pretty much on target.