But the center was met with resistance early on after it was discovered the city was allowing people to use drugs there. Critics argued that it enabled addiction and that very few people were connected to addiction treatment through the site.

News of the center closing in December comes at a difficult time. Breed and supervisors work out a nearly $14 billion budget and must decide where to invest the resources to address some of the city’s thorniest issues, including homelessness, mental health and addiction.

A few weeks ago, supervisors voted to extend the center’s June lease through the end of the year. And in early June, the health department allowed the media, who had been barred from the center, to finally visit it.

Breed spokeswoman Parisa Safarzadeh described the center in a statement as an “immediate intervention to stabilize the community in the short term while the city develops its longer-term plans for the Tenderloin.”

“Declaring an emergency allowed the city to quickly launch a service center as a safe respite from the streets where homeless people and people who use drugs could get basic needs met and access services like housing and behavioral health interventions and overdose prevention,” Safarzadeh says.

Although it was billed as a temporary solution to a chronic problem, the center appears to be operating at high volume, serving around 400 people every day at its fenced site, according to Safarzadeh.

“We’ve reversed overdoses — we’ve saved people’s lives,” Vitka Eisen, CEO of HealthRight 360, a nonprofit partner helping to operate the center, said of her staff’s work. In addition to treating overdose patients, workers also offered hot showers, meals and outlets to charge their phones.

“It doesn’t make sense to me that we close one program without opening others,” she said.

It is unclear whether the center was profitable. In its first five months, workers logged more than 49,000 visits, but only 53 addiction treatment connections. The center also completed 900 shelter placements and 150 permanent supportive housing placements. Operating the center for the next six months will cost $10.6 million, although city officials were unable to say how much the first six months of operation will cost.

Community organizer Del Seymour, founder of the nonprofit Code Tenderloin, has been a supporter of the center and is disappointed that it is closing. Code Tenderloin is one of the city’s nonprofit partners providing services to the center.

Seymour touted his accomplishments, saying he said his organization had hired at least 40 people referred by the center’s case managers.

“No one has ever said the word ‘permanent’, and we understand that,” he said. “But now we are seeing successes. So why give something to someone and then take it back?

He said the central location of the site may have triggered a pushback.

A new apartment tower and Whole Foods Market have just opened in the Mid-Market, signaling a possible turnaround in an area where businesses have long struggled with drug abuse outside their doorsteps, compounded by the sagging economy . As more investment begins to flow into the city center, Seymour said he wouldn’t be surprised if complaints pile up about the center, with its high barricades, canopied tents and queues of people waiting to enter. Seymour would like to see the concept continue. but moved elsewhere.

Sarah Shortt, a representative of the Treatment on Demand Coalition, had also supported the center’s model and methods but questioned the execution. She remembered the bravado with which Breed announced his package of programs to clean up the Tenderloin and the Civic Center.

Shortt wondered if the city had just found an available space at UN Plaza — albeit one with a rent of $75,000 a month — and “just jumped on it.”

“It was all done in kind of a ‘grand gesture,'” Shortt said. “For the mayor to just walk away from it at this point,” with no alternative for people who clearly rely on services, “reinforces that maybe it was just that – a gesture.” She worried that the mayor, who faces pressure to reinvigorate the local economy, had given in to complaints from the neighborhood.

Still, Breed spokesman Jeff Cretan said residents’ concerns were never factored into the city’s decision to pull the plug. Officials expected strong feelings on all sides from the moment they announced the center, he said, but that hasn’t stopped the city from methodically testing solutions.

Meanwhile, the city is pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into other homeless and behavioral health interventions. It is also trying to address street conditions that businesses and residents of Tenderloin and Civic Center have complained about, including illegal street vending. An order that came into effect on Thursday aims to crack down on illegal selling at UN Plaza. Public Works staff will enforce the new sales rules, which require permits and the ability to show a “chain of custody” for all goods sold on the street.

The emergency has also increased funding for overtime and police infrastructure, such as public toilets, adding social workers and outreach staff to encourage people to seek treatment. On top of that, the mayor has proposed spending $4 million on projects in the Tenderloin next year, which could include street or park improvements. Breed has also publicly lobbied for supervised drug consumption sites, a controversial strategy to ease the overdose crisis that has broad political support in San Francisco.

Although the city’s behavioral health budget has enough money to support such sites, they are not state or federally sanctioned and may face legal obstacles.

Supervisor Matt Dorsey, whose neighborhood stretches across the downtown and southern Market Area, said on Thursday he needed more information before weighing the upcoming closure of the center, which n is not in his neighborhood but is close to it.

Dorsey announced a plan this week for police to prioritize apprehending drug dealers and seizing illegal drugs in areas where people are seeking help with drug addiction – such as at the exterior of a treatment center – which was partially inspired by the neighborhood’s disenchantment when the city unveiled the center at UN Plaza.

He presented the plan as part of a “right to recover” initiative aimed at preventing overdose deaths and despair caused by fentanyl.

Residents and merchants “will rightly be suspicious of anything we do to encourage outdoor drug scenes and brazen drug dealing,” Dorsey said, standing in a parking lot near Sixth and Sixth Streets on Thursday. Market, where he had attended the mayor’s press conference to announce a new housing ballot measure.

After speaking at the event, Breed declined to answer questions from reporters.

JD Morris, Chronicle editor, contributed to this report.

Rachel Swan is a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected]: @rachelswan