City College of San Francisco Closing Downtown Campus

City College of San Francisco’s low enrollment is freeing up some downtown real estate as it is closing a nine-story downtown campus and consolidating operations.

The community college will close its campus at 88 Fourth Street this summer and relocate its culinary, fashion and language classes to other under-enrolled locations, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

City College owns the 84,000-square-foot building and is on the search for “potential partnerships with other educational institutions, community-based organizations, the city and other partners” that could set up camp in the building, Messina said.

The move to other sites, such as its Chinatown campus, comes as the school stares down losing $2.2 million in state funding next year because of its lean student count. The college has 152 full-time students, well below the required 1,000 to continue receiving state money. That loss of funds and the cost of maintaining the campus at Fourth and Mission Streets prompted leadership “not to schedule classes at the Downtown Center for the fall semester,” City College Chancellor Kimberlee Messina told employees, per the Chronicle. Messina noted that no workers will lose their jobs because of the change.

City College’s Downtown Center differs from its other locations because funding is directly approved by the state. Despite the drop-off in enrollment below required levels in recent years, the Downtown Center stayed open thanks to pandemic-related funding.

Meanwhile, the college is hoping to boost attendance at 808 Kearny Street in Chinatown, 1125 Valencia Street in the Mission District and 1860 Hayes Street, known as the John Adams Center, near the University of San Francisco. Its goal is to increase enrollment from just 1,438 to 2,700 full-time equivalent students across those campuses.

Another educational institution is setting up shop in the city.

In January, Vanderbilt University purchased the California College of the Arts campus in the Design District with plans to establish its West Coast satellite. Its goal is to set up a full-time academic campus at the site beginning in the fall of 2027 that will serve roughly 1,000 undergraduate and graduate students.

— Chris Malone Méndez