June 25, 2025
Source: By Rachel Scheier CoStar News June 23, 2025 | 3:47 P.M.
San Francisco’s mayor announced the appointment of a new planning director as part of a shake-up of key positions as he tries to boost the city’s economy and add thousands of units of housing.
Sarah Dennis Phillips, a real estate executive who has led San Francisco’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development for the past two years, will take over the top planning role, announced Mayor Daniel Lurie’s office. Phillips replaces Rich Hillis, who said last month that he planned to step down.
The change is part of a shuffle of key officials the mayor says will help implement his vision “for San Francisco’s economic recovery by cutting red tape, supporting small businesses, adding housing, and revitalizing downtown,” said his office in a press release. Anne Taupier, who currently heads up development for the mayor, will take over for Phillips at the helm of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development. Finally, Liz Watty, the director of current planning for the planning department, will oversee Lurie’s PermitSF initiative, which aims to streamline San Francisco’s permitting process for developers.
Lurie said in a statement that all three officials “have the leadership, experience, and track record to drive our city's economic recovery.”
The new planning director holds degrees in planning and urban design from the University of Virginia and Harvard. Phillips first joined San Francisco’s planning department in 2005 and worked for the city in various capacities before joining developer Tishman Speyer as a senior director in 2019. In 2023, then-Mayor London Breed hired Phillips back to fill a role in the Office of Economic and Workforce Development to help spearhead the city's post-pandemic recovery efforts.
The appointments come as the city seeks to implement an ambitious rezoning effort that will allow for denser and taller housing developments to accommodate tens of thousands of additional new homes. The “Family Zoning Plan” is part of the city’s so-called Housing Element — its state-mandated plan to provide for a certain number of new homes — and as such, it must be adopted by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors by the end of January 2026 or the city risks losing state funding for transportation and housing projects.
Reforms
San Francisco is behind on its requirements to build new housing, despite initiatives to ease development in recent years. While rents have jumped more dramatically than any other city in the nation in the past year, the city is just 9% of the way toward its state-mandated goal of planning for slightly over 82,000 new homes between 2023 and 2031.
Mayor Lurie, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, took office this year promising a raft of reforms to promote new housing in the city and a “new era of cooperation at City Hall.” Developers are hopeful that rising rents after a long period of pandemic-era softness will encourage more projects to move forward.
San Francisco’s current planning director, Rich Hillis, has been working for the city since 1995. He took the helm of the planning department a month before the pandemic shut down San Francisco in March 2020, beginning a period in which new construction all but disappeared.
San Francisco saw its office vacancy rate rise from the lowest in the nation in 2019 to the highest, as a perfect storm of COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, remote work and layoffs among technology companies caused tenants to downsize at record levels.
A gradual recovery in the office market is now taking hold, however, with high-profile local investors making discounted deals for offices in downtown San Francisco.