Commissioner behind SF’s scrapped “doom loop” tour steps down

A “doom loop” tour of Downtown San Francisco was doomed before it could get off the ground. It also dunked the job of a city land-use commissioner behind the event.

Alex Ludlum, who served on the city’s Commission on Community Investment and Infrastructure, resigned after emails suggested he had organized the Downtown Doom Loop Walking Tour, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The $30 tour was scrubbed just before tourists took to the sidewalk last weekend.

Ludlum, a vice president at the local real estate investment firm SPI Holdings, didn’t admit to being the man behind the scrapped tour until Monday. Mayor London Breed had appointed him to the commission last year.

The 35-year-old co-founder of the SoMa West Community Benefit District had meant to show off Downtown’s “doom and squalor.”

“I regret that my attempt to bring attention to the deplorable street conditions & rampant criminality in my neighborhood has been misconstrued as a mockery of suffering individuals,”  Ludlum wrote in a letter to the mayor. “Satire is a poor way to address the grave issues we face as a city.” 

The tour, which purportedly sold out, was supposed to show its walkers the “urban decay” in the Tenderloin, Mid-Market and Union Square — which has put San Francisco under a national spotlight for its open-air drug markets and hollowed out tech offices. 

It aimed to showcase “the outposts of the nonprofit industrial complex and the deserted department stores,” according to its now-defunct website.

Academics have warned of a potential “doom loop” in San Francisco and other cities, driven by remote work leading to plunging real estate values and falling tax revenue, leading to cuts in city services and an exodus of residents. 

The Downtown degradation and loss of businesses has tarnished the city’s national reputation. The Mayor’s Office wasn’t happy with a doom loop tour, which coincided with a positive tour led by the nonprofit Code Tenderloin.

“The decision to organize and publicize the tour was a mistake and a deep error in judgment,” Breed spokesman Jeff Cretan told the Chronicle in a text message. “We are working every day to address the city’s challenges.”

Ludlum is familiar with the city’s challenges. He’s vice president of acquisitions at SPI Holdings, founded by Dennis Wong, part-owner of the Los Angeles Clippers and former minority owner of the Golden State Warriors.

At development firm Group I, Ludlum helped win approval for a 236-room hotel and condo project at 950 Market Street completed last year on the edge of the Tenderloin. While working for Polaris Pacific, he helped create the Market grocery store in the headquarters of X, formerly Twitter.

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“The unchecked drug dealing is plainly the root of our current problems. … All of downtown will suffer until the markets are closed,” Ludlum wrote to Breed. 

While many public officials derided Ludlum’s tour as insensitive, one of his colleagues described the stunt as “a form of protest,” according to the San Francisco Standard. 

Adam Mesnick, owner of the Deli Board sandwich shop and a fellow board member of the SoMa West Community Benefit District said: “He works his ass off for a better city and expects leaders to follow suit.” 

— Dana Bartholomew