You can see it walking down Central Market Street at dusk: One by one the windows of the new residential buildings are starting to light up.

Despite empty office buildings and rows of shuttered retail — and open air drug dealing that has become so bad that in December the city declared a state of emergency — residents are moving into the long-troubled heart of San Francisco’s main street.

At Prism, a 193-unit complex at 1028 Market St., 36 units have leased since it opened about six weeks ago. Next door, the 301-unit 50 Jones St., which debuted during the darkest days of the pandemic, is now about 85% leased. A block to the east, the traffic of potential buyers to the Serif condos at 950 Market St. has doubled since February as COVID cases started to drop. About 50 condos out of 242 have sold there.

“We are seeing a lot of people who are moving to San Francisco for the first time, whose companies are requiring them to come back to the office soon,” said Olympic Residential Group Director Adam Tetenbaum, who oversaw development of Prism.

For years the injection of thousands of several of housing units along Central Market Street was seen as the missing element of a revitalization that took off a dozen years ago as tech companies like Dolby, ZenDesk, Twitter, Square and Uber took over vacant or under-utilized buildings. Tens of thousands of workers shifted much of downtown San Francisco’s entrepreneurial verve north from SoMa and west from the financial district. That brought retail, restaurants and a burgeoning arts scene.

But while about 2,000 new housing units opened in the west end of Central Market Street — these included 100 Van Ness, Trinity Place and Nema — proposed Market Street developments between Mason and Jones street moved much more slowly through the approval process. The result is that signature housing projects at 50 Jones, 1028 Market and 950 Market missed the Mid-Market tech boom, instead opening at a time when the pandemic had left office buildings deserted, foot traffic sparse and storefronts boarded up.

“So much closed down on Market Street during the pandemic,” said Simon Bertrang, executive director of the Tenderloin Community Benefit District. “It’s not a very active place right now.”

Developers Dan Diebel (left) and Adam Tentenbaum at Prism on Market Street in San Francisco. The building with 193 housing units and a green space rooftop opened in January.

Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle

Businesses that shut down included Popson’s Burgers, Equinox Coffee, Warm Planet Bikes, Huckleberry Bikes, Homeskillet and World of Stereo.

For the developers of 1028 Market St., a joint venture of Olympic Residential Group and Tidewater Capital, the hope is that the expected return of office workers will combine with new investment to jump start the stalled Mid-Market story. And already there are glitters of home. Ikea started construction on its $260 million mall at 945 Market St. A new Line Hotel will open this summer alongside the Serif condos at 950 Market. Next week the city’s largest Whole Foods will open at 8th and Market, part of the 1,900-unit Trinity Place project.

And even some of the shuttered restaurants are finding new life: the former Homeskillet at 1001 Market is now Gai Chicken & Rice while what was Popson’s Burgers at 988 Market St. will become Fayala, a French and Mediterranean restaurant.

Prism is aiming to attract younger, price-conscious workers. The building is offering eight weeks of free rent on a 13 month lease. Even without the incentive Prism’s units are competitively priced. The most affordable studios are renting for $2,275 a month, less than the city average of $2,423. One bedroom start around $3,300, about average for the city but less than other amenity-rich buildings similar to Prism — which has a large rooftop garden, gym and entertainment spaces.

William Deng, 22, landed at a Prism studio after moving to San Francisco from New York. A life science researcher, Deng recently landed a job at a biotech company in South San Francisco and wanted to be close to BART and Caltrain but also “close to the hustle and bustle of the city.”

He said he was attracted to Prism because it’s new construction. He said the staff in the building has been accommodating, organizing resident get-togethers and offering free tickets to Harry Potter and The Cursed Child at the nearby Curran Theater.

Deng is well aware of the street conditions in Mid-Market and the Tenderloin, but said it’s “not as bad” he imagined. He said he has already noticed more activity on Market Street in the weeks since he moved in. Foot traffic will only increase as offices open up this spring and summer, he said.

“We are surrounded by countless companies and apartments with people working from home,” he said. “Just imagine how different and safer the morning and evening commute will be with all those people on the street.”

Rather than seeing its lack of parking as a disadvantage, Prism uses it to attract a young, environmentally conscious worker like Deng, according to Tetenbaum.

“We gear it to people who want to bike and walk and use transit,” said Tetenbaum. “The bike lane and Muni and BART are out the front door.”

Overall, San Francisco’s rents rose 9% in the last year, after dropping about 25% during the first year of the pandemic, according to the brokerage CBRE. Occupancy is now about 95%. With some companies planning a March return to office — at least part time — buildings like Prism could benefit from new hires moving to San Francisco, said CBRE research director Colin Yasukochi.

“A lot of the tech companies have done very well during the pandemic,” said Yasukochi. “They have hired tens of thousands of people and a lot of those new hires have never seen their home office. And housing is still in short supply.”

The question is whether the new investment along Market Street will help improve the lives of the 30,000 Tenderloin residents to the north of Market Street who have long struggled with rampant drug dealing, violent crime and trash-strewn sidewalks and alleyways, according to Bertrang.

“If we can’t deliver clean and safe sidewalks … it will be a wasted opportunity,” he said.

The historic tenderloin “should be an attraction for people moving into the new buildings instead of something they are worried about,” Bertrang said. “If the city can address the basic issues of cleanliness and safety it’s going to support everyone. The intensity of the drug trade right now is really damaging.”

Tenderloin Housing Clinic Executive Director Randy Shaw said the contrast along Market Street is evident. On the one hand, buildings like Prism are delivering housing that was a decade in the making. On the other, it’s hard not to be discouraged about an area that was bustling five years ago and is now more depressed and hard hit by drug dealing than it was five or 10 years ago.

Even the land where Prism now sits was full of life from 2015 to 2017 when it was The Hall, a pop-up food court that featured jazz, bluegrass and afterschool art programs for Tenderloin kids.

“I’m trying to figure out how we get that scene back,” he said. “There are good things on the horizon but at the moment it’s tough out there.”

JK Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen

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Residents fled New York City and San Francisco following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, but cell phone data shows they didn’t go too far.

A new study shows that many of the residents who have moved from Manhattan and the City by the Bay have changed their address to the outskirts or neighboring suburbs, which are within a 100-mile radius.

Almost two in five – or 37 percent – of those who moved out of Manhattan settled in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Long Island and Westchester.

According to a study by analyst Placer.ai, only 2 percent of Manhattan residents migrated to Miami-Dade County, Florida, while roughly the same percentage moved to Palm Beach County.

The study analyzed cell phone data from the 12 months leading up to January 2021.

The largest percentage – 14 percent – of former Manhattans withdrew to Suffolk County, where many are believed to have second homes in the Hamptons and nearby hamlets along the south coast of eastern Long Island.

A new study shows that many of Manhattan residents who have moved have changed their address to the outskirts or neighboring suburbs

Similar trends have been observed in San Francisco. According to the study, many who left the city stayed in the Bay Area. One in ten Franciscans moved across the bay to San Mateo County, while slightly fewer – 9.2 percent – moved to Alameda County

A U-Haul moving truck can be seen in this 2016 file photo up in San Francisco. New York and San Francisco were two of several major cities that experienced negative net migration between January 2020 and January 2021

Another 15 percent moved together to Nassau County, Queens, Brooklyn, and The Bronx.

Fairfield, Connecticut; Westchester County, New York; and Monmouth County, New Jersey, made up 7.4 percent of Manhattanites transplanted.

Similar trends have been observed in San Francisco.

According to the study, many who left the city stayed in the Bay Area. One in ten Franciscans moved across the bay to San Mateo County, while slightly fewer – 9.2 percent – moved to Alameda County.

The third most popular destination for those leaving San Francisco was Contra Costa County, home of Berkeley.

The study also found that New York, California, and Massachusetts were among the states that experienced the highest negative migration between January 2020 and January 2021. Meanwhile, low-population states like Montana, Idaho, Delaware, and Hawaii saw population growth over the same period

Around 6.3 percent of San Francisco residents moved south to Los Angeles, while 5.2 percent stayed a little closer to home and settled in Santa Clara County.

Overall, around 15 percent moved to various locations including Sacramento, Orange County, San Diego, Sonoma County, and Marin Counties.

“The clear finding is that even large communities with high rates of migration outside of the state have lost a large percentage of their residents to nearby inland and neighboring out-of-state counties,” concluded the authors of the Placer.ai study.

“While cities lose population in the short term, they don’t necessarily lose their center of gravity.

“This information can have a significant impact on local office and retail sales decisions.”

The study also found that New York, California, and Massachusetts were among the states that saw the highest negative migration between January 2020 and January 2021.

New York State had negative net migration of 1.8 percent, while California’s net negative migration was 1.1 percent.

Massachusetts net negative migration was 1.4 percent.

In cities, San Francisco had the largest negative net migration (2.4 percent), followed by Los Angeles (1.9 percent), Boston (1.7 percent), New York (1.2 percent) and Chicago (0.7 percent) Percent).

In sparsely populated states such as Montana, Idaho, Delaware, and Hawaii, there was population growth over the same period.

Idaho’s population grew nearly 4 percent, while Montana saw positive net migration of 3.7 percent.

In cities, San Francisco had the largest negative net migration (2.4 percent), followed by Los Angeles (1.9 percent), Boston (1.7 percent), New York (1.2 percent) and Chicago (0.7 Percent).

The cities with the highest positive net migration in 2020 include Tampa (1.5 percent), Charleston (1.5 percent), Austin (1.3 percent), Phoenix (1.3 percent) and Las Vegas (0.8 Percent).

Despite the grim news, recent developments such as the introduction of a COVID-19 vaccine and falling infection rates offer hope.

In the past few days, New York City has shown signs that the coronavirus pandemic has been brought back to life a year later. Tourism slowly increased and more pedestrians frequented Times Square.

Although activity in the city is still well below pre-pandemic levels, tourism officials say visitor traffic is increasing in yet another sign of New York bouncing back.

The Times Square Alliance, a nonprofit group that oversees the area, told the Wall Street Journal last week that 115,000 people a day recently passed through the iconic area.

On March 12th, people gather in Times Square for a performance. Recently, around 115,000 people a day have been walking through the cult area, a 15% increase over the winter numbers

People wear face masks as they walk the Mall in Central Park amid the coronavirus pandemic in New York City on March 11, 2021

Mobility data from Apple shows that pedestrian activity in New York City is 35 percent below the pre-pandemic baseline

That’s a 15 percent increase over daily traffic in Times Square since September – but less than a third of the 365,000 daily visitors the tourist Mecca saw before the pandemic.

Hotel occupancy in the city hit 47 percent for the week ended March 13, according to STR, a data firm that tracks the hospitality industry. This is the highest weekly value since June last year.

That’s a 38 percent increase in January, but well below the city’s hotel occupancy rate of 87 percent for the same week in 2019.

Tourism is a major engine of the New York economy, and in 2019 the city had a record 66.6 million visitors, according to NYC & Company, the city’s tourism bureau.

Last year the number fell to 22.3 million, but the agency estimates it will climb to 36.4 million this year.

Mobility data from Apple shows that pedestrian activity in New York City is 35 percent below baseline before the pandemic, up from 80 percent below baseline a year ago.

The data shows that driving activity is roughly in line with baseline, while transit activity remains 48 percent below baseline.

Transit data from the MTA shows that NYC’s daily subway count is still more than 60 percent lower than last year as New Yorkers eschew public transportation in favor of other modes of transportation or working from home.

This is a caveat on Big Apple’s relief as New York State plans to end a two-week quarantine mandate for overseas visitors on April 1st.

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