Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

How San Francisco's Westfield turned into a ghost mall: The dying center where 75 PERCENT of units are empty and more stores are closing - as shoppers describe 'dodgy' area overrun with homeless who left them 'scared'
DAILY MAIL ^ | 28 January 2024 | LEWIS PENNOCK

Posted on 01/29/2024 9:29:04 AM PST by george76

The San Francisco Center, once a thriving mall home to the largest Nordstrom in America, is a shell of its former self after a string of high-profile departures..

Staff and shoppers in the mall, where five more stores closed in January .. crime and falling foot traffic is ruining the palatial building..

The mall lost $1 billion in value last year

...

The mall's cavernous, marble-floored atrium is eerily quiet. There's not a single shopper in sight and a litany of abandoned stores lay mostly empty, but for a few leftover cardboard boxes or fading signs which serve as a reminder of the former occupants.

...

a few years ago the luxurious complex would have been heaving with shoppers ...

...

Businesses have left in droves ... occupancy is at a measly 25 percent ... the homeless have moved in and drug-taking and crime have risen.

...

'Five years ago, this place was thriving,' Tara Button .. she and her daughter cut their visit short – with no plans to return again.

...

Nordstrom's closure .. once occupied 350,000 feet of the San Francisco Center across five floors – making it the largest Nordstrom in America.

Two months earlier in June, Westfield announced it would give up ownership of the mall, which once bore its name, and turn over the property to its lender. A cutting statement blamed the 'deteriorating situation in downtown San Francisco' and 'unsafe conditions for customers, retailers, and employees'.

...

falling foot traffic and rising crime made the departures inevitable.

....

San Francisco's dismally high office vacancy rate, which was 35.9 percent in December. That situation is compounded by the departure of several large companies, including accounting giant KPMG

(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; Front Page News; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: California
KEYWORDS: abandoned; affirmativeaction; anarchotyranny; california; californication; crime; dei; die; diversity; dystopia; esg; homeless; mall; nordstrom; sanfrancisco; sanfransicko; westfield; westfieldmall
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-64 next last
To: BlueStateRightist
"It’s hard to point to any large American city worth visiting. They all suck!"
21 posted on 01/29/2024 10:17:29 AM PST by Grampa Dave (Trust no one, who is not a proven and valued/trusty one or a family member or a long time friend! )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]

To: george76

To be fair, this doom and gloom description applies to most malls in America.

But because this is in San Francisco, there is an extra helping of schadenfreude to be applied.

Suck it losers.


22 posted on 01/29/2024 10:17:30 AM PST by Responsibility2nd (A truth that’s told with bad intent, Beats all the lies you can invent ~ Wm. Blake)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: george76

Often after the sun sets, the abandon stores/mall become a no man/woman area until mid morning the next day.

Perfect places to store illegals.


23 posted on 01/29/2024 10:30:02 AM PST by Grampa Dave (Trust no one, who is not a proven and valued/trusty one or a family member or a long time friend! )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: george76

Isn’t it amazing how quickly and easily, and thoroughly, Marxist radicals can destroy a civilization?


24 posted on 01/29/2024 10:34:46 AM PST by _longranger81
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: george76

Let the bums and illegals fight over it


25 posted on 01/29/2024 10:39:21 AM PST by bigbob
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: george76

>>The mall’s cavernous, marble-floored atrium is eerily quiet.

I’ve never understood why one would want to buy clothing in a store with marble floors.

The overhead of marble floors must be built into the price of the clothing.

Clothing should be bought online or in economically built and operated real estate.


26 posted on 01/29/2024 10:39:57 AM PST by FarCenter
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Army Air Corps

I lived in the Bay Area from ‘71 to ‘89. It was a pleasant place to live and work up to the late 70s, early 80s. But the on-going disintegration was becoming more apparent by the day.


27 posted on 01/29/2024 10:41:24 AM PST by Noumenon (You're not voting your way out of this. KTF)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: george76

Give out free stuff and advertise and the freeloaders will come.


28 posted on 01/29/2024 10:45:16 AM PST by fella ("As it was before Noah so shall it be again," )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: scott7278

Ive seen quite a few articles claim that this mall or that one was closed due to internet/Amazon but that isnt true and they accidentally touch on it in this article.

I remember discussing this problem and the likelihood of the spread to other areas in one of my earliest posts around here(’98) because our oldest and biggest mall was already having problems before any of those things really existed.

By around 92-94ish the mall in question had lost nearly all its traffic. I think this situation may have started in a somewhat unique place but it hurried along what became the inevitable across the country.

The mall was relatively close to the largest mental health hospital in the northern half of the state which quickly became one of the only ones as most counties began shutting theirs down. The patients were bussed in from counties all over but obviously all these people couldnt have an appointment at the same time so the busses stopped at the mall and dumped them all off.

They all started hanging out by the...lets call it a food court, and begging, sometimes rather aggressively. There was still some traffic to the mall but no paying customer bothered to go down to that end of the mall. Somewhere along the line the local kid gangs realized that some of these semi-abandoned people were easy to con and many of those that werent easy were interested in the purchase of various things they couldnt find in their more controlled environments back home.

This mall didnt have any parking lots. Since it was downtown all the parking was in attached ramps. The ramps turned into hangouts for all the little gangsters. Vehicles were being robbed and visitors harassed. That was the end of any visits by older women or younger women with children. Stores that catered to them pulled out and stood empty. Soon neither older guys nor younger women wanted to deal with it either and the stores that still had something for them pulled out too. A few young office working males going in to buy a burger at lunch just isnt what it takes to keep a mall afloat.

Its the crime. Its the ne’er-do-wells. Those things are encouraged by liberals. You cant crack down on crime because then youre a racist or targeting the disabled. This is what started the collapse of the American mall long before any real money was being made online.


29 posted on 01/29/2024 10:46:57 AM PST by gnarledmaw (Hivemind liberals worship leaders, sovereign conservatives select servants.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Responsibility2nd
To be fair, this doom and gloom description applies to most malls in America.

Most, but not all.If there is a reasonably low percentage of "minorities" in the area, malls are still doing OK.There is one reasonably close to me that is always packed. You do not want to see what happens when a bus line is extended to an otherwise nice area. Ferals will quickly destroy any such oasis as fast as they can. America would be a better place if we'd only picked our own cotton, as the base of the problem is blacks. Central Americans (i.e., wetbacks) will ultimately have the same effect, and the current government is doing what it can to make sure that particular cancer is spread far and wide.

30 posted on 01/29/2024 10:52:47 AM PST by zeugma (Stop deluding yourself that America is still a free country.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies]

To: scott7278

You build it and they will come


31 posted on 01/29/2024 11:14:18 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: SaxxonWoods; Grampa Dave

Disabled light rail train leads to headaches for Denver commuters..(RTD) has made changes to the E and H light rail schedules while a train remains disabled on the tracks, since at least early Friday.

https://denvergazette.com/news/transportation/h-line-disabled-denver/article_017b0648-beb3-11ee-b777-83717e5c731b.html


32 posted on 01/29/2024 11:15:36 AM PST by george76 (Ward Churchill : Fake Indian, Fake Scholarship, and Fake Art)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: BlueStateRightist

I got out of Indianapolis 20 years ago.


33 posted on 01/29/2024 11:16:44 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]

To: Flavious_Maximus

The USA is the third most Populus countries on Earth.

If we were to add ONE BILLION more citizens, it would STILL be the third most populous!


34 posted on 01/29/2024 11:19:44 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 20 | View Replies]

To: gnarledmaw
This is what started the collapse of the American mall long before any real money was being made online.

No, this WAS!


35 posted on 01/29/2024 11:22:13 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 29 | View Replies]

To: zeugma

Blessed is the nation whose god is the Lord.


36 posted on 01/29/2024 11:25:27 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies]

To: BlueStateRightist

Boosters of cities talk about how they have orchestras, live theater, museums, and Thai restaurants. These are among the reasons residents and visitors alike are said to enjoy the cities.

But if one runs a gauntlet of danger to get to the museum or the Thai restaurant, some may well decide its not worth it.


37 posted on 01/29/2024 11:29:30 AM PST by Dilbert San Diego
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]

To: Wally_Kalbacken

You’d be fortunate if the whiffs stopped at urine.


38 posted on 01/29/2024 11:41:59 AM PST by muir_redwoods (Freedom isn't free, liberty isn't liberal and you'll never find anything Right on the Left)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: muir_redwoods

Nancy Pelosi’s district where she has made hundreds of millions of dollars and her policies have ruined San Francisco and endangered millions of people. Yet, the demoncrats will still vote for her. Disgraceful


39 posted on 01/29/2024 12:16:23 PM PST by Cowgirl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 38 | View Replies]

To: george76

Westfield SF was an expansion and renovation of the flagship of a store called The Emporium, founded in 1896. They preserved the building’s facade and 102-foot dome. Probably the most glorious retail space I’ve ever seen. The forthcoming collapse of this enterprise is a perfect metaphor for the suicide of the SF


40 posted on 01/29/2024 12:17:48 PM PST by j.havenfarm (23 years on Free Republic, 12/22/23! More than 8,000 replies and still not shutting up!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-64 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson