The battered San Francisco Center has lost another store, closing for the fifth time in the last month, leaving the mall at just 25% occupancy.
Clothing brand Madewell announced the closure in San Francisco's largest, sprawling Union Square mall, posting on its website Monday that it would be closing the outpost.
Madewell's closure comes after its sister brand J. Crew issued a similar notice on Monday, January 22nd, closing its San Francisco Center store.
According to the signs posted in the shopping district, san francisco chronicleshoe store Aldo will close on January 21st, and denim giant Lucky Brand will withdraw from the mall on January 29th.
The mall has seen a mass exodus of high-profile retailers since last year, after one of the mall's largest tenants, Nordstrom, vacated the 312,000-square-foot multi-story space in August.
Soon after, we said goodbye to Hollister, Lego stores, and Cinemark movie theaters.
The exit caused the mall's value to drop by a staggering $1 billion.
The 1.5 million square foot property was recently valued at $290 million, down from its $1.2 billion valuation in 2016. genuine This was reported as information from Morningstar Credit Analytics, an investment evaluation and analysis company.
According to the SF Chronicle, the mall's owners, Westfield and Brookfield, suspended payments on their $558 mortgage last year, citing a drop in foot traffic and the lowest sales since the pandemic.
“Westfield has proudly and successfully operated San Francisco Center for more than 20 years, and during that time we have invested significantly in the vitality of the property,” Westfield said in a statement after the loan default.
“Given the difficult operating conditions in downtown San Francisco that have led to declines in sales, occupancy, and foot traffic, we have begun the process of transferring management of the shopping center to a financial provider and allowing the financial provider to appoint We have made this difficult decision. The recipient will now operate this facility.”
A judge then appointed Greg Williams of Trident Pacific Real Estate Group to take over the besieged mall at 865 Market Street. He will reportedly be paid $30,000 a month as San Francisco Center's trustee.
The future of the mall is uncertain, but San Francisco Mayor London Breed has proposed redeveloping the mall as a soccer stadium and has hired local architecture firm Gensler to conduct a feasibility study for a sports arena. They even hire people.
The newspaper has contacted Madewell and the mall's owners, Brookfield and Unibail-Rodamco Westfield, for comment.
San Francisco Center's struggles are part of a larger problem in the city, which has been plagued over the past year by rampant crime, boarded-up retail stores, the flight of Silicon Valley tech companies and homeless encampments.
J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon declared last week that “San Francisco is in a much worse situation than New York,” pointing to a housing shortage and offering small, 4-foot-tall, 3.5-foot-wide housing units. He pointed out that the price of “pod” space has soared to $700. per month.
The pods are less than half the size of Candlestick Point RVs, which the city opened for homeless people in January 2022. He has 30 of his RVs in a “secure parking lot” called the Bay View Triage Center, which costs him $12,000 per month per vehicle in San Francisco, but residents can use his 24/7 parking lot. Live rent-free with security.
“They are [companies] We need housing,'' Dimon told Fox, arguing that if employers can't get permits to build affordable housing, they can't hire high-paying employees.
Google, for example, plans to build a 15,000-unit residential campus around its San Francisco headquarters that will include four master-planned Bay Area neighborhoods worth a combined $15 billion across Sunnyvale, San Jose, and Mountain View. It is expected that
However, the tech giant ran into trouble late last year when developer Ledlease pulled out of the contract, citing “current market conditions”, even though construction was not scheduled to begin until 2026.
