Walter Wong’s ‘kingdom’ sells to porn baron — a strange and terrible saga

It’s hard to miss CitiCenter, a hulking 95,000 square foot structure at the corner of Mission and 13th that resembles the building on the Stolichnaya label painted tomato red. And yet, for many years, San Francisco officials did just that. 

The address here is 1717 Mission St. But, also, 205 13th St. And it turns out there were many, many other addresses attached to this building. Its longtime owner, erstwhile permit expediter extraordinaire and confessed federal criminal Wing Lok “Walter” Wong, had a purported hand in that. This building housed perhaps half a dozen Wong-controlled companies that had city contracts. Rather than tip his hand by listing the same address for them all, Mission Local is told Wong simply installed a mailbox with dummy addresses — 1735, 1743 and so on.

That solved the problem — for Wong at least. Less so for the city: The stuff Wong’s many companies sold to San Francisco was, unlike Stolichnaya, not always of the quality fit for a czar. 

The city’s janky trash cans, for example, were provided by one of Wong’s many outfits via a $5.2 million city contract. It’s hard to imagine that Wong’s close ties with city officials, including since-incarcerated Public Works boss Mohammed Nuru, weren’t a factor in the process to replace these trash cans now running longer than World War II and beginning to approximate its cost. 

When the city, finally, turned its legal firepower against Wong in 2021, its settlement agreement included $387,000 worth of trash can parts.

It is difficult to overstate the influence Wong once had in San Francisco government. He essentially ran the Department of Building Inspection’s plan-check and central permitting divisions, seeding his people within the department to handle his projects — including longtime former DBI chief Tom Hui. He purportedly had his own keys to DBI’s offices and was seen walking behind the desk there and stamping his own paperwork. 

Wong was a good buddy of multiple mayors — fatefully including Mayor Ed Lee, aka “35.” Wong’s building served as a campaign headquarters for a broad swath of political candidates of varying political flavors, including Mayor Willie Brown in 1999 and Matt Gonzalez just four years later. Wong provided campaigns with office space, volunteers, food, drinks, tech, phones, computers — the works. He’d build and fix stuff himself. He was, in the words of one political pro, “a one-stop shop.” 

The Chronicle last week broke the news that, after years of shopping CitiCenter around, it appears a deal has been struck: The land and structure has sold to an outfit tied to the porn baron behind Kink.com. Mission Local has learned that people presently working in this building will be departing by July 13. 

Lord knows what kind of crazy things will take place on this site in the future. But, here’s the thing: They won’t be half as weird as what’s happened here already. 

The first thing you’d notice on dropping by CitiCenter, said an erstwhile job seeker, was the birds. You saw them, You heard them. Perhaps you even smelled them. There were cages everywhere, crammed between people’s desks, mingled among the Chinese New Year decor and parade float items out in the hallway. 

The birds were noisy, but Wong’s employees paid them no mind. Workers answered phones, used copy machines and talked over the squawks while holding court at the water cooler. Nuru, a frequent caller here, had a purported habit of antagonizing the birds. Among those who noticed, it was not appreciated. 

Visiting “Uncle Walter” at his private penthouse lair was a bit like getting in to see the Wizard of Oz: You needed to go through an attendant, who phoned upstairs and determined if you were welcome company or not. And then you needed keycard access to operate an elevator that took you to the exclusive fourth floor. (Did “Mayor 35” eventually get his own keycard? We’re told he did).  

Most visitors didn’t go this route. Many topped off at the third floor at the greasy spoon Center Cafe. Did this on-site restaurant in Wong’s building turn a profit? Perhaps, perhaps not. But it enabled him to profit in other ways. Wong was able to provide food to many a politician’s preferred charitable endeavors. He hosted an annual Christmas party for hundreds if not thousands of attendees, cramming three floors of his warehouse-sized building and tents outside with a political who’s-who of guests. 

CitiCenter, said one frequent attendee, was “Walter’s own self-sufficient kingdom.” 

It was. And it was a kingdom built on influence, reach and relationships. Attendees recall seeing city inspectors eating at the Center Cafe, but don’t recall if they paid or not. While the Department of Building Inspection says it has no information indicating that DBI archival records were once stored at Wong’s CitiCenter, multiple sources tell us this in fact happened. 

Additionally, this in-depth 2001 Chronicle profile of Wong recounts that he was paid $36,000 over three years to store DBI records (and did remodeling work at the DBI office). 

Building inspectors also tell us that they used to park their cars on CitiCenter-adjacent land leased by Wong. It was, for many years, an overtly cozy relationship.

Wong’s self-sufficient kingdom enabled him to do more than feed Chinatown seniors or throw indulgent sing-along soirees attended by damn near every politico in town (as well as hundreds of jolly tipplers). Having a restaurant on hand also enabled Wong to host frequent gatherings for his true business partners: City leaders, department heads, favored contractors. 

These were held at the Center Cafe and featured guests like Lee, Nuru, since-convicted ex-PUC GM Harlan Kelly, since-ousted DBI boss Tom Hui, since-convicted former Public Works employee and contractor Balmore Hernandez and others. The crossover between frequent attendees at Wong’s gatherings and people drummed out of city life and/or incarcerated for corruption was notably high.   

But, hey, at least the food was pretty good. Yelp reviews for since-defunct Center Cafe are laudatory — but, also, circumspect. 

“I would have given it 5 stars,” wrote one reviewer in 2018, “but the combination of the 82 health score and my frequent visits to the bathroom after this meal (and eating leftovers) worries me about what’s going on behind the scenes.”

If he only knew. 

Matt Gonzalez’s star-crossed 2003 mayoral run remains the high-water mark for people-powered progressivism in San Francisco — there was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. … We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. 

Metaphysically, Gonzalez 2003 was the place in San Francisco where that wave finally broke and rolled back. Physically, that came at CitiCenter, where he had his mayoral headquarters. When Gonzalez gave his concession speech at a nearby nightclub, a heartbroken young supporter remembers wondering where all this energy would go. 

Sometimes, however, energy just dissipates. And the presence of the ultimate insider and fixer at the heart of even the city’s most organic and genuine political campaign reveals a lot about how power works in San Francisco. Nobody would accuse Gonzalez of being corruptible or transactional, but his opponent, Gavin Newsom, had designs on reforming the Department of Building Inspection. This, in part, led Wong, as well as Residential Builders Association chieftain Joe O’Donoghue, to support the upstart Gonzalez. 

Newsom did indeed move to clean house at DBI, thereby impeding Wong’s free rein there.

CitiCenter went on to host other political campaigns. But, absent the transcendent vibes of Gonzalez ’03, the memories don’t seem quite so magical. Politicos describe it as an oft-malodorous building (squawk!) with “gross carpeting” and inadequate restroom facilities. Sometimes, when the lights come on in the bar at 2 a.m., what they reveal is not fun to see. 

But Wong still did just fine. Within a decade of Gonzalez’s defeat, Wong had his flunky installed atop a department seeded with them. He still operated in an exalted state: In 2005, a small police “koban” structure was yanked out of the ground in Chinatown and stolen, sparking a lawsuit and something of a cross between a municipal scandal and a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. And yet the purloined koban sat for years, in plain view, in the yard of Wong’s CitiCenter building. Nobody did anything. Nobody made a move. “It’s totally gangsterism, right?” remarked one longtime city politico. 

It took outside forces, namely the Feds, to move in on the City Family. When Nuru was arrested in January 2020, Wong’s offices at 1717 Mission (and 1735, 1743, etc.) were soon raided. He pleaded guilty to fraud charges and went on to offer up his former dinner guests to the Feds on silver platters.

Everyone is surprised that “Uncle Walter” hasn’t served a day in prison. But his extensive cooperation, old age and purported poor health probably have something to do with that. Regardless, he remains a free man and, per the Chronicle, is some $14.9 million richer after unloading his erstwhile kingdom. 

Kink, as its name implies, is an interesting outfit. Truly bizarre acts may yet transpire on this site. But, again, nothing so bizarre as what’s transpired already. And, when it comes to the city’s well-being, nothing so harmful.