City College’s Closed Center

The doors at the Downtown Center are locked and students want back in. 

As City College finalized the closure of its downtown campus, more questions arise about next steps. Programs like the culinary arts and English as a second language (ESL) programs will be going through an immense transition to other campuses. 

Chancellor Kimberlee Messina’s team is currently searching for partnerships that can assist the college with funding. Selling the Downtown Center building has not been a topic of discussion due to trustees not favoring that option. Ideally the college wants to find other options to preserve City College’s occupancy in the area.

Messina said that although there are “no specific plans currently,” the board of trustees “expressed their commitment” to “exploring partnership options so that City College can remain a presence at [Downtown] location.”

The non-credit baking program has been transferred to Ocean Campus in the 2026-2027 academic year. Next year this program will transition to Chinatown/North Beach Center. The non-credit ESL classes have been reassigned to Chinatown/North Beach and Mission centers. 

Classes being transferred to different campuses poses a temporary solution, however students who attended Downtown Center are still struggling with the transition.

Quynh Le is a new member to the college’s community. She is majoring in TK-12 education. To Le, Downtown Center was home away from home. 

Because of the “welcoming and friendly community,” the center felt like a big community rather than “just for studying.

Within her second semester, the inviting warmth she got from her teachers and fellow students encouraged her to be part of the Associated Student Council (ASC).

Downtown Center offered excitement from the mundane routine of going straight home after school. 

Le received her bachelor's degree from the Fo Guang University in Yilan, Taiwan, in applied Buddhism and Buddhist culture. She came to City College to improve her English skills.

Tracy Jue, who has been an ESL instructor with City College since 2002, expressed how Downtown Center provided students of all backgrounds with a lot of connections. 

“For downtown, they really liked having that community there because it had a really diverse student population. It’s not just one or majority monolingual like at Mission or Chinatown,” Jue said.

Jue’s students always enjoyed the events Le and ASC hosted at the downtown campus.

Downtown Center served a lot of the downtown community. In the 27 years Christa Lewis has been with City College, she says ESL classes have always been high in demand. “There hasn’t been low enrollment. That’s a euphemism that’s been used by the administration. What has happened is there has been an underutilization of the building.

“I feel it’s a huge disservice to the community meanwhile the city has said they want to revitalize downtown. We should be a central partner in that,” Lewis said. 

“We’re not recognizing the people we serve and that is a failure,” Lewis said.

Downtown is undergoing a lot of transformation, especially with Daniel Lurie’s proposal, Heart of the City. Lurie’s vision is to “accelerate” San Francisco downtown neighborhoods and businesses. Although Lurie is not directly involved with City College's Downtown Center closing, the changes that are undergoing downtown will impact the many communities there.  

More information about Downtown Center is circulating. There will be more updates as soon as more decisions about the center are released.