City College of San Francisco to Close Downtown Center Campus

City College of San Francisco is closing its Downtown Center campus this summer due to low enrollment and loss of funding, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The campus, one of the community college’s six sites in the city, enrolls just 152 full-time and 900 part-time students. But unlike the other City College campuses, it is run directly by the state of California, which requires a minimum enrollment of 1,000 full-timers to award it $2.2 million annually, according to the S.F. Chronicle. In recent years, pandemic and other state funds have allowed the Downtown Center campus to operate even as its head count dropped well below the threshold, but that money is now gone.

“Our leadership team has made the difficult decision not to schedule classes at the Downtown Center for the fall semester,” City College chancellor Kimberlee Messina told employees in an email Friday, adding, “There will be no job losses because of this change.”

The Downtown Center campus, which specializes in culinary arts, fashion and language classes, will relocate its programs to other campuses. City College owns the nine-story building where it’s located and will seek “potential partnerships with other educational institutions, community-based organizations, the city and other partners” to move in, Messina said.