Common Street, the area where this structure sits, is something of a blight on the face of Downtown, although not nearly as bad as some of the districts south of the bay. It never really recovered from the 1970’s downturn, and to this day features an embarrassing number of unoccupied or even decaying buildings. The city government has tried several times to revive the neighborhood. Their biggest attempt to-date is the Common Center; it is also their biggest failure. Designed in 2002 as a set of four ultramodern glass-and-steel office buildings, it was supposed to attract financial institutions and law firms from across the entire East Coast. However, all those plans have come to naught, as they just can’t seem to get the structures built in the first place.