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Westfield Gives Up Downtown San Francisco Mall
- nonrepeating 3y agoTimes change quickly. It was less than ten years ago that the second wing of the mall was completely renovated, with a food court that was an eclectic and upscale delight. Now it’s destined to become yet another dead and haunted mall.
- SllX 3y agoCloser to 15 years at this point, but your point still stands.
- skmurphy 3y agoValley Fair in San Jose, which is also owned by Westfield, reports revenues at pre-pandemic levels. https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/03/21/san-jose-westfield-valley-fair-retail-restaurant-covid-real-estate/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/03/21/san-jose-westfield-va...
- d3nj4l 3y agoIt's also a much better mall tbh
- ng12 3y agoIn a nicer, significantly safer area.
- spike021 3y agoValley Fair and Santana Row across the street are pretty much always busy. Sometimes it's surprising to me because both, and especially VF since they expanded again recently, are much higher end and I would think not as affordable to the average family but maybe I'm wrong.
- peoplearepeople 3y agoThere aren't many places for people to just walk around and browse with air conditioning. Many malls are 80% outdoor parking lot
- yibg 3y agoThat particular mall is also probably the nicest one around the area. Actually decent dining options (not just food court food), some public space to hangout / people watch etc and a good selection of high end and lower end brands. I'm not a big mall person, and I hate shopping for clothing, but I do find malls in many Asian countries pretty interesting. Bangkok comes to mind, with food stalls, indoor "markets", floors of dining options available.
- supportengineer 3y agoIt’s a great place to pick up a new LV purse then wait 3 hours for some udon and top it off with a $70 pizza
- d3nj4l 3y agoThe lines at marugamu and nagi are insane!
- ra7 3y agoSo is the wait time at Din Tai Fung!
- usui 3y agoSpot on. Quite the, um.... experience.
- spike021 3y agoThe udon is great for what it is but not worth that kind of wait; however, you may be interested to know Marugame recently opened a location up the street in Cupertino and so far at least it hasn't been nearly as busy, at least on weekdays.
- peoplearepeople 3y ago> which is also owned by Westfield I thought westfield were selling all their US malls
- skmurphy 3y agoThey are but it's currently owned by Westfield and in theory subject to the same management strategies as SF mall.
- rr808 3y agoYes, presumably no one wanted this one. https://www.foxla.com/news/all-westfield-malls-in-us-to-be-sold-by-2023 https://www.foxla.com/news/all-westfield-malls-in-us-to-be-s...
- cscurmudgeon 3y agoSelling vs giving up.
- darth_avocado 3y agoThis should give all those SF apologists something to think about. There are always excuses for the deteriorating conditions. Either it’s not as bad as everyone claims to be. Or it’s bad, but pandemic is to blame. If either of those things were true, why would SF lag so much when San Jose didn’t? Unless the city was mishandling everything.
- nouveaux 3y agoI am no SF apologist but if you read through the article: "Over the past three years, Westfield has sold a number of properties, including the Westfield Brandon in Tampa, the Westfield North County in San Diego and the Westfield Santa Anita in Arcadia." SF leadership is problematic but it's not clearcut to me that Westfield closure is just an SF city problem.
- andromeduck 3y agoSan Diego was never an international city, neither are the others. People useeto fly in here from all over the world to visit the city, see a concert, or do some business followed by a bit of shopping. Those tourists are largely gone and conventions are increasingly moving elsewhere because of concerns over safety and property crime. More to the point, San Franciscomore so than any other city is a stand in for the US for most of APAC because that's were most of the Asians are and where most international flights from Asia most often terminate. When San Francisco becomes a joke, democratic governance itself becomes a joke.
- monero-xmr 3y agoSometimes you need a living example to set the boundaries on extremes. SF went extreme in a certain way that was becoming more popular, and likely the tide will come in now.
- lsy 3y agoMy sense is that surviving and thriving malls in urban areas today are really destination experiences for dining. Valley Fair has extremely high-quality dining options which brings the foot traffic that props up the whole enterprise. The SF Westfield never felt like they cracked that. It's only been open since '88 so it was sort of a latecomer to the mall era and got stuck in the department store, shopping-as-destination model. It required a detour down from Union Square's shopping district and didn't have much to do inside besides shopping, so I'm surprised it hung on this long.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- vonnik 3y agoIf anyone ever wondered what the symptoms of urban blight were before NYC became the mess it was in the 1970s, SF is exhibit A. The city's leadership has driven out its anchor businesses, tax base, corporate travelers, and much more. Federal bailouts are SF's only hope.
- hindsightbias 3y agoI haven’t willingly gone to a mall in 20 years. Who goes there? Mall walkers? Are there still arcades? Faster, please.
- anon291 3y agoMalls in suburbs are extremely busy. I'm about as pro urban as you get. I live two miles from downtown Portland. But I have noticed that a lot of urbanites pretend that malls are doomed. This is a lie. Suburban malls are clearly doing great while urban malls, including those in dense walkable areas are faltering. In fact, all downtown areas are faltering at least on the west coast .
- no_wizard 3y agoPortland would have a great downtown if they got the unhoused population under control. The complete inaction of Portland's government to do anything substantial to actually fix this problem is what made Portland go from a very happening and up & coming city to a nightmare. As an Oregonian living now just outside of Portland (near Nike FWIW) I'm hoping for the day Multnomah and Portland get their act together. Such a great area to live otherwise. Kinda not surprised why Bend blew up in population though, once I realized what was going on
- rconti 3y agowhat do you mean "once I realized what was going on"?
- rconti 3y ago> The decline of the American mall has left just 700 still standing. Soon there may be just 150 left. https://www.businessinsider.com/american-mall-decline-150-left-10-years-how-many-2022-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/american-mall-decline-150-le...
- milleramp 3y agoTwo large hotels in the downtown area recently stopped making mortgage payments. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/two-s-f-s-largest-hotels-given-owner-18136504.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/two-s-f-s-largest-hot...
- q1w2 3y agoFull article: https://www.wsj.com/articles/hotel-owners-start-to-write-off-san-francisco-as-business-nosedives-e84c64ef?mod=Searchresults_pos2&page=1 https://www.wsj.com/articles/hotel-owners-start-to-write-off...
- toofy 3y agoThere are a number of amazing channels on youtube who have been documenting the rising “Dead/Dying Mall” trend over the past couple of decades… - Dan Bell - Sal - Ace’s Adventures - Retail Archeology - Bright Sun Films … are just a few of them. Dying malls has obviously been a trend across the country, but I’m cautiously predicting that this will change as more people crave interaction with actual humans and as more people get tired of being misled about the products they’re purchasing online. Anecdotal, but it seems like most people whom Ive happened into the subject with have had worse and worse experiences purchasing online over the past couple years—everything from colors not matching the photos, to fitting wrong, to cheap construction, to not living up to what they expected, and on and on and on. I’ve also noticed more people saying they wish they could just have the item in their hand immediately to get that immediate satisfaction/closure. All anecdotal of course, but it feels like we may move back in that direction, at least a little. Until then, there is definitely no shortage of content for the dozens of “dead mall” channels.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoDoes online-purchase-bad => the-rise-of-malls? Personally, malls are still the last brick and mortar place I would go to shop.
- berkeleyjunk 3y agoI think you have a point but part of this was self-inflicted. Instead of knowledgeable salespersons who could help with the purchase, the stores tried to cut costs and replace them with lower cost people who did not know/care as much. If they reverse this trend I think the malls can come back.
- ajsnigrutin 3y agoMost of what malls around here have are clothes, just a few tiny shops and a supermarket (food, etc.). Considering there's not much choice in elecroics etc. in the first place, and most of the stuff is just clothes, I don't really care about the salespeople, I just wan't the shirt and shoes, pants, etc. to fit. A large t-shirt in C&A fits me perfectly, but in Primark the XL model is too short, and I need an XXL slim size. If i buy nike sneakers, I sometimes need one or even two numbers larger shoe than with other brands (adidas, reebok,...). Buying online has been a pain and in case of cheaper stuff, a waste of money, since returning a 9eur shirt meant driving to the post office, packing it up, paying postage to return and wait for a couple of weeks to get 9eur back after spending 10eur to ship stuff back.
- ed25519FUUU 3y agoTypical sna Francisco story. Property owner says it’s the crime and deterioration of public city. The city says it’s actually not their fault. San Francisco defenders say it’s actually just economics and nothing is truly wrong with their city.
- readthenotes1 3y agoThis was covered by a different "news" patient that put the blame is squarely and solely on the cost of living being so high that regular folks cannot afford to live in San Francisco. I think the person interviewed in the article got it more right (heh): ' "This place is somewhere to get away from what's happening on the streets."'
- hintymad 3y agoI assume it has to do with the crime rate, including violation of bylaws by homeless, like loitering in the elevators per some security guards of the mall? If so, I have to ask: what do the politicians stand to gain by refusing to enforce the law? Why did they instead resort to attacking any criticism by using the magic R word?
- alexnewman 3y agoI say good. Let the giant corporations leave. Let the office space crash. Let the tax base erode. San Francisco will come back harder. We need creatives, artists and people who work with their hands . The tech people would be lucky to be a minority with such a backdrop
- perfectstorm 3y agowe live 20mins away from Westfield mall but my wife and I rather drive down south to Serramonte or even Hillsdale mall (30mins+ drive). my wife doesn't want to deal with certain characters in SF downtown and i don't blame her a bit. i have seen my fair share of broken windows and general craziness in SF. i mean who wants to see a butt naked guy while shopping for a pair of jeans? pre-pandemic my colleague had the bad fortune of seeing someone taking a dump right outside Bart station.