San Francisco’s ‘Dead Mall’ Is For Sale
The ghost of the Pandemic still lingers in Downtown San Francisco. While it seems every other part of the City is as lively as they’ve ever been, Downtown does feel significantly less crowded than it was in 2019.
Back in the pre-Pandemic days, Market Street was booming. Techies, skaters, super-commuters, construction workers, tourists, drug addicts (both housed and unhoused) filled Market Street from Van Ness all the way to the Ferry Building.
I wouldn’t quite call it dead currently, but you could make an argument that it’s on life support, if not at least in the ICU. And this decline in foot traffic naturally affected the businesses in the area. The biggest example of the San Francisco retail rapture is the shuttering of what was an annoyingly crowded mall. Now it’s a depressingly dead mall. If you’re me, that’s an improvement. Get the fuck out of my way! But if you’re an investor, it’s exactly the opposite of what you want to hear.
I’m talking about the Westfield Mall, or the Emporium, or the San Francisco Centre. I always love when something is fucked up and developers or politicians think renaming it will somehow help. Cough looking at you International Boulevard formerly East 14th Street. Cough
But that’s Oakland shit, and this article is about San Francisco. Investors and the City are looking for someone to acquire the Westfield Emporium San Francisco Centre Mall despite no one really going in it. Obviously someone will purchase it eventually, likely with negotiated discounts and tax incentives that small businesses will never get because urban America is pants-on-head silly.
If I were to guess, my money is some techie guy who wants to turn it into something, but San Francisco is filled with bad techie ideas. Instead of listening to Patagonia Patrick, maybe listen to someone else for a change?
Turn it into affordable housing, and keep the bottom floor retail. In order for a place, any place, to be consistently vibrant, you need people there. If people live there, people will be there. If you were to redevelop the mall into a mixed-use affordable housing development, and you want those businesses to be successful, poll the people who live in San Francisco and surrounding cities to see what kind of businesses they’d actually go to a mall to support.
It’s a pretty simple idea: Put people in a place, give people what they want.
This won’t happen, but it’s nice to dream. Until then, have fun exploring the empty corridors of the Bay Area’s premier dead mall. It’s almost like conducting an autopsy on the corpse of capitalism.
Have fun with it. We’re at the end of the American empire. Enjoy yourself.
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Howdy! My name is Katy Atchison and I'm an Associate Editor for Broke-Ass Stuart.
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