Some say that San Francisco Centre, formerly a Westfield operation, should have been insulated from the wider dead mall phenomenon. Others say it was bound to happen sooner or later. As a former mall rat whose first job was in the dying mall of his childhood, I belong in the latter camp. I saw the future before I escaped the rotten apple core of middle America. Shopping malls, once the air-conditioned oases of the Plains, were already hemorrhaging tenants. I still went into retail here, knowing the end was nigh, because this moribund industry was the only one in which I had work experience.
I even worked at the Westfield San Francisco Centre, riding those spiral escalators to the top of the atrium before shifts. The indecipherable buzz of a mall more than 90% leased out rose from the atrium, reminding me of a beehive. It was 2012, and the mall I had worked in back in Kansas City was slated for demolition. When will it get here, I wondered? It won’t be long, said the future.
Online shopping slowly eroded San Francisco Centre, but COVID annihilated it.
Online shopping was supposed to support brick-and-mortar stores, not supplant them. The idea was to use it as an expansion of on-hand inventory, for specialty items or sizes we did not carry. People are supposed to shop for clothing in-person—specifically the person wearing the clothes. Why isn’t it obvious that online shopping is more of a hassle? You have at best a 50/50 shot the item will fit, and if it doesn’t, you now have an errand to run. You might say shopping is an errand too—it is, and when you’re done, you’re done. If you shop online and have to return or exchange something, all you’ve done is multiply a single errand by two, maybe three.
I live a short walk from Union Square. When I needed a new shirt, I didn’t wait five business days for it to arrive. I took my happy ass on a shopping trip with the unremarkable intention of buying a shirt that day. Now my options are H&M (for how much longer, who knows), Ross, or a trip to a Goodwill. I had to visit all three just to assemble an inexpensive cater-waiter fit. It took me all day too, whereas I’d have spent only half a day at the mall.
I am not saying I love malls. I don’t. They’re a shitty substitute for an actual center of commerce. Businesses should make up a downtown, and not as a “shopping district.” Prioritizing a financial district-only kind of model helped kill the American downtown, along with freeway loops and the assassination of public transportation. Concentrating the shopping in downtown San Francisco kept San Francisco Centre alive while many malls in the United States withered.
2019 was the mall’s last profitable year. Then COVID hit, spelling the beginning of the end.
Going, going, gone
San Francisco Centre is a shell of its former self. None of the stores I worked at survived. There, the spiral escalators run for virtually no one. Out on Market Street, the doors to the mall, though unlocked, rarely open. The underground entrance at Powell Street BART is shuttered, the muted “Westfield” labelscar loud against glaring blue glass. A couple vestigial stores still struggle to drum up circulation. The lights are on, but nobody’s home.
In 2023, previous owners Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield and Brookfield Properties defaulted on the $600 million loan meant to keep the mall open. As more storefronts permanently closed and left the building, mystery surrounding what will become of the beleaguered shopping center grew. At present, just 9% of the 1.2 million-square-foot mall is leased. When Nordstrom closed, the mall’s last anchor tenant went dark. While technically a primary store, H&M is the de facto anchor.
Now the spurned investors are pushing to evict the mall’s remaining tenants. The San Francisco Business Times acquired a copy of the eviction notice recently sent to those tenants. While it is unclear if every store was notified, Ecco Shoes and Samsonite are among those who were. The latter, a luggage manufacturer, had already planned to leave the mall after this holiday season.
The notice demands that retailers "immediately vacate and surrender the premises," saying their leases were "extinguished" by the turnover. The mall’s new owners "will not permit any holdover," and of course, demand immediate payment of any rent currently due. (SFist) Some storeowners were told to leave by December 31; others, January 26.
"The company is still trying to figure out how to get us out of here," an employee of one of the evicted stores anonymously told the Business Times. "But 'immediately' is not possible."
A reason for the sweeping eviction notice has not been released, but speculation is strong that it will set the stage for drastic redevelopment. “It’s no secret that the bank consortium that bought the San Francisco Centre mall just wants to sell the place again, and hopefully flip it for a profit. (SFist) The SF Business Times notes that ‘some brokers have said a full-on clean-out wouldn't surprise them.’ After all, it might be easier to sell the property if the place is completely empty.”
