SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – San Francisco Mayor London Breed is not happy with Elon Musk's business practices, particularly after he bailed on the Bay Area and moved the Tesla headquarters to Texas.
Breed, in an interview with Bloomberg's California Bureau chief Karen Breslau, published on Monday, said Musk was granted "a ton of tax breaks in California and decided to take that money and run."
Her remarks come as Musk is poised to purchase Twitter and its massive mid-Market offices, an area that continues to suffer post lockdown. Breed called out not just Musk, but also Salesforce's CEO Marc Benioff, a San Francisco native, for allowing employees to keep working remotely.
"(Benioff is) very supportive of the city, continues to contribute that support to schools and to other great causes, but the building is empty, and that’s a real problem," she told the outlet. "Ultimately I can't force or mandate, right? These companies are making the decisions that they believe that are in their best interests."
Salesforce is San Francisco’s largest private employer.
Breslau said the Mayor realizes she can't wait around hoping that tech workers come back to in-person work.
"She did talk a lot about the biotech sector and the fact that some of the buildings including the Twitter headquarters on Market Street are suited for biotech laboratory use because of the way the space is structured," Breslau said on KCBS Radio’s Tech and Business Report on Tuesday. "She seemed to be hopeful that it was one fruitful area for the city to diversify."
"The city is going to have to stop waiting on Salesforce etc. to fill their buildings and start pivoting to other employers and to other strategies including a lot of subleasing of space, luring in biotech and greentech companies, and really moving away from the notion that the giant tech employers are going to save the downtown office area."
Only 40% of San Francisco's pre-pandemic work force is back in the office, the lowest rate in the U.S., compared to nearly 60% of Austin's growing tech hub.
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