8 ms·

Westfield Walks Away from Downtown San Francisco Mall Property

62 points by philips 3y ago

philips 3y ago
Two facts from the article that summarize the position. > The mall, co-owned by Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield and Brookfield Corp., has $558 million in outstanding mortgage debt. Management will be turned over to a receiver. > Sales at the Westfield San Francisco Centre fell to $298 million last year from $455 million in 2019, while foot traffic dropped 43%, Morse said. Traffic and sales at other Westfield properties increased during the same period.
vkdelta 3y ago
“ Traffic and sales at other Westfield properties increased during the same period.” This clearly shows there is demand but people prefer to go somewhere else. San Francisco is becoming worse day by day with crime and city maintenance. But mayor wants to somehow not show any link with this and conveniently says it is long coming.
- estebank 3y ago
  Look at the zoning map[1]. All the red is only commercial buildings. (If you don't want to open the PDF, effectively the entire zone all around Market Street and Union Square, from Folsom to China Town.) Businesses in cities thrive on foot traffic. Those offices are now pretty empty because a ton of employees are still working remotely, so the area is no longer a destination, and no one lives there. It's not shocking to me that people don't go to that mall anymore. In the rest of the city, where people live, businesses are thriving (at least restaurants, those are the easiest to gauge whether they have clients or not, it can be that other kinds of businesses are doing poorly). 1: https://sfplanning.org/resource/zoning-use-districts https://sfplanning.org/resource/zoning-use-districts
  - GeneralMayhem 3y ago
    That map is misleading if you just look at the colors, because all the downtown mixed-use zones are grouped under "commercial". The red in SoMa is mostly "C-3-O (SD)", for "commercial 3 - office - special districts", where there "special district" rules allow either offices or residential over street-level retail. There's a bunch of large condo buildings in the red areas between Folsom and Market east of 4th (you're probably at least familiar with the infamous Millennium Tower at Mission and Fremont and the visually distinctive Mira at Folsom and Spear). Along Market in the other direction, "C-3-G" ("Downtown General") also includes apartment buildings, and there's a few that have opened in the past few years between 6th and 9th. North of Market to the east you have more of the traditional financial district, but that's really quite a small area, and it's not where the mall is. You also have to remember tourists, which have actually picked up pretty well post-pandemic. The red areas in around Union Square and in SoMa between 2nd and 5th contain a large fraction of the city's hotel rooms. That's not permanent residents, but it's still a lot of people.
    - estebank 3y ago
      If you look at the population density per neighborhood[1], that area is not any denser than other parts of the city, including the very residential Richmond and Sunset districts, but the number of shops is much higher. That means that all things being equal, shops throughout the city are more spread out and have less competition, allowing them to have an easier time being profitable. To me that tells me that downtown is entirely reliant on people going there from other parts of the city, while the other neighborhoods service their local communities. Furthermore, urban malls rely on foot traffic: malls are either a destination (you go there because you need multiple things so you save multiple trips around town) or they are a place of convenience (they are next to transportation hubs or landmarks with lots of foot traffic). Westfield SF was rarely the first, and lost the later for years due to the pandemic. 1: https://statisticalatlas.com/county/California/San-Francisco-County/Population https://statisticalatlas.com/county/California/San-Francisco...
    - TMWNN 3y ago
      >You also have to remember tourists, which have actually picked up pretty well post-pandemic. The red areas in around Union Square and in SoMa between 2nd and 5th contain a large fraction of the city's hotel rooms. That's not permanent residents, but it's still a lot of people. Tourism *in San Francisco* has not recovered. From <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...>: >Park Hotels said San Francisco’s convention-driven demand is expected to be 40% lower between 2023 and 2027 compared with the pre-pandemic average.
- echelon 3y ago
  I stayed at the Hotel Zetta last month. It's on the same block as the Westfield. Nearly every night, mentally ill homeless people were screaming at the top of their lungs, making it extremely hard to get to sleep. This lasted until 3 and 4 AM. On the few nights I ventured out after dark, there were people sprawled out all over the sidewalk, and you had to jump around or walk into the street to avoid them. There were lit fires on the bare sidewalk under the Westfield entrance. It's surreal.
  - taylodl 3y ago
    "Mentally ill homeless" - have been there since Reagan deinstitutionalized the mentally ill and cut funding for mental illness. The problem has just only gotten worse over time. I remember friends going to San Francisco in the 90's and saying it was awful and they'd never go back. All that to say, this problem has existed for decades. It doesn't explain the recent drop in foot traffic which is largely caused by people no longer going to the office. Getting around in SF isn't the easiest thing to do and if you don't have to go downtown then you're probably not going to. This scenario is playing out in downtowns all across America.
    - RestlessMind 3y ago
      > since Reagan deinstitutionalized the mentally ill and cut funding How long are we going to blame Reagan? Democrats have supermajority in California since 2011-12 ballot reforms, and hypermajority in SF. It's not for a lack of funding neither as SF has spent billions[1] so far. So blaming it on Reagan and funding is just lazy and dishonest. [1] 1.45B per https://abc7news.com/sf-homeless-plan-housing-all-san-francisco-supervisor-rafael-mandelman/12760671/ https://abc7news.com/sf-homeless-plan-housing-all-san-franci...
      - emaginniss 3y ago
        Looking at it from a nationwide perspective, there were two watershed moments in mental health treatment in the late 20th century. The first was in the 60's when JFK (whose sister had been savaged by the mental health institutions) signed legislation changing the requirements for commitment to be "posing a danger to oneself or others." This was a change from the metric of "mentally unfit to live independently in society." The second was in the 80's when Reagan and the Democratic-majority congress defunded and shuttered many of the state-owned mental health facilities. This was a bi-partisan effort by the Republicans, who hated spending money, and the Democrats, who hated how poorly run the facilities were. Nobody has had a really good solution for mental health care in the US since those happened and, as the parent post points out, it is unfair to paint this as "Reagan defunded mental health care."
refurb 3y ago
That's a big deal. Westfield Mall is an anchor for most of the shopping on Market Street. It's actually a bit of an anomaly if you think about the death of malls in the US. Union Square has been emptying out over the past few years. It's not a small number of stores leaving, it's major anchor stores. A new IKEA is supposed to be opened on Market. I wonder if they'll reconsider?
- jhbadger 3y ago
  In some ways I wonder if this might turn out to be good for SF in the long term. I remember visiting SF in the 1980s and there were a lot of cool, indie stores in places like Union Square. Places that made the place worth visiting. In the 1990s and even more in the 2000s, the place turned into one national chain store next to another.
  - dougSF70 3y ago
    The lenders need to revalue the properties so as to lower rents. This could bring an influx of independent stores in. However, downgrading of commercial real estate does have broader ramifications
    - duncan_idaho 3y ago
      The degentrification going on will lower the prices sooner than later.
      - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
        Which will lower tax revenues... Which will lower government services... And SF government services are already abysmal.
  - xhkkffbf 3y ago
    The cool, indie stores were the first to go. They can't afford to be so accommodating to theft. The big box stores and the chains were able to cross-subsidize with the profits from the burbs. But now even they can't afford the chaos.
unstatusthequo 3y ago
Last time I was there, staying at Hotel Zetta, I noticed how much more dodgy the area seemed. I can't imagine this is going to help that any. Love SF, but it's going in the wrong direction and I'm glad I left at this point. At some point perhaps the voters will get tired of their city decay. Now we see hotels are even questioning their existence there: https://www.wsj.com/articles/hotel-owners-start-to-write-off-san-francisco-as-business-nosedives-e84c64ef https://www.wsj.com/articles/hotel-owners-start-to-write-off...
jassyr 3y ago
I haven't been to SF in 20 years and reading the news I can't decide whether it's the 10th Circle of Hell or just another misunderstood American city. The comments eventually will support both sides equally no doubt.
- carimura 3y ago
  As always the story has many angles but overall the trend is not good. There are parts of the city that used to be "just kind of sketchy" which now are basically un-walkable for the average person, especially those who don't know the city. You can't leave anything visible in your car otherwise you'll return to a vehicle with a lot more airflow. And it's clear the commercial occupancy rates haven't returned and may not for some time. None of this is particularly unique to SF, but a lot of things hit SF at once, which makes the incredibly high housing prices and rents just not palatable anymore. It's still a great city and will surely return but the question is where is the bottom?
  - xhkkffbf 3y ago
    Mark Roper, the former NASA engineer who designed glitter bombs to catch porch pirates, has also been putting out the bait in San Francisco. It's very sad how quickly the robberies happen. https://abc7news.com/glitter-bomb-package-mark-rober-youtube-video-sf-car-break-in/12594779/ https://abc7news.com/glitter-bomb-package-mark-rober-youtube...
    - dougSF70 3y ago
      Aka, the uni(corn)bomber.
  - dougSF70 3y ago
    Realtors are desperately clinging on to the idea of $1000 per sq ft in an average neighborhood...
- snotrockets 3y ago
  s/misunderstood/misplanned/
caycep 3y ago
Granted, in a way, I always have a hard time seeing "Westfield Mall" and dense/urban city centers as being compatible... All of Rick Caruso's malls in LA are, to be sure, probably profitable but terrible in terms of urban planning
- waihtis 3y ago
  you obviously haven't been to London then. The city has two gigantic Westfield malls which are completely packed day in, day out.
  - matt-attack 3y ago
    Los Angeles is the same. The Westfield in Century City has to be a flagship location and is constantly mobbed.
- aworks 3y ago
  I live in Menlo Park. We frequently go to SF for cultural/historical/nature reasons. But to go shopping, it's far easier to drive and park at Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto or Santana Row in San Jose. I've stopped in at Westfield before but it was never a destination and I don't remember ever buying anything there.
- xeromal 3y ago
  How are malls against urban planning? Seems like kind of the opposite no? All the stores you need to visit in one place. As long as they're close to where you live, seems like a win win to me.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
    It's a win if you want to dedicate 50% of your city to roads and parking like LA does - a loss otherwise. YMMV
    - CydeWeys 3y ago
      Many urban malls have no parking whatsoever. You get there by transit or walking. I think you're mistaking "mall" for "strip mall".
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
petercooper 3y ago
A bit of a tangent, but the thing that stood out most to me when I visited that mall was the spiral escalator. Apparently Westfield SF had the first long-term installation of one outside of Asia, and I'd certainly never seen one before. It turns out London Underground experimented with the idea in the early 1900s – https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/blog/spiral-escalator-engineering-wonder-ahead-its-time https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/blog/spiral-escalator-engineering... – but it took until the 80s for Mitsubishi Electric to build and install them at scale. Oh, and the second thing that stood out there was the restroom setup. A non-enclosed unisex restroom area with staff managing a line of people and urinals overlooked by said queue. Certainly one of the more interesting ones. I assume to prevent drug taking or people sleeping in there.
bannedbybros 3y ago
[dead]
_jab 3y ago
Something that might not be obvious to onlookers is the extent to which these problems are concentrated in only Downtown SF. Though the situation downtown is undoubtedly bleak, many other neighborhoods in SF have been surprisingly lively lately, such as Mission Bay, Hayes Valley, and Dogpatch. A lot of people, myself included, still like SF, just not the downtown. It's a shame; SF doesn't have any other retail hub, and every store that closes feels like a loss. The question will be to what extent can the damage be contained to downtown, and whether other neighborhoods can help make up for the decay of downtown. I'd consider myself cautiously optimistic.
- omginternets 3y ago
  Why are you optimistic?
- erickhill 3y ago
  I lived in SF/East Bay across 10 years (eventually owned a house in El Cerrito) and moved up to Seattle in 2011. I love both the Bay Area and Seattle deeply. What's happening to SF is very similar to what has become of Portland. That, my friends, is not a downtown I would recommend anyone visit until something changes. Simply walking around any time of day it becomes immediately obvious that if you're walking downtown you're either a hapless tourist or homeless. Most of the locals seemingly drive into downtown, jump in and out of stores and restaurants that are still in business, then they drive back home. The suburbs and surrounding areas are gorgeous, but large sections of downtown are just ... terrible. (And often scary.) Seattle was teetering on this fate, but Amazon forced their enormous workforce to come back to the office. And, it produced a lot of blowback from the employees. But, local employees went back. What has that done? It has created a TON of downtown traffic. Not fun at all. But it has also injected the downtown core with (you guessed it) lots of people and money, keeping small businesses downtown alive in some areas. At least for now, Seattle seems to have dodged the ghost town blues that have befallen beautiful SF and Portland.
- subsubzero 3y ago
  This is not concentrated in only downtown, break ins and store robberies are happening across the entire city. I was there in March and market square and Union square were like something out of a mad max film. My friend who lives in the Marina of all places just left the city for good and had his car broken into multiple times as well as was hit by a car with a driver who was high on drugs. My brother visited golden gate park to ride his bike and when he got back his roof rack was broken by vandals trying to steal it(in broad daylight!). The mission and SOMA are also dangerous and I think really only the sunset is somewhat normal although thieves still target porch packages and break into cars there. I can't vouch for mission bay or Hayes valley so maybe not all parts are terrible but the good areas are not as safe as they used to be.
dadjoker 3y ago
Well, they could do thing like enforce laws, arrest and prosecute criminals, and not allow shoplifting under $950 to have no consequences, but that apparently would be too much to ask. They made a good start be recalling Boudin, but they have a lot more to do.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Natsu 3y ago
  They're still going in a different direction: > Senate Bill 553, which was submitted by State Senator Dave Cortese, has been passed by the State Senate and will now progress to policy committees in the State Assembly. Cortese hopes the proposed law will prevent workplace violence and protect staff from being forced by their employers to step-in during robberies. But some store bosses are furious about the plans, with the California Retailers Association mocking the move as an open invitation for thieves "to come in and steal." https://www.newsweek.com/store-retail-violence-robbery-theft-stealing-california-1804565 https://www.newsweek.com/store-retail-violence-robbery-theft...
subsubzero 3y ago
What you have is a notoriously dysfunctional govt. that has been borderline criminal running the city(into the ground) for close to 30+ years now. From Willie Brown to Gavin Newsom to Ed Lee, and now London Breed you have had a political machine creating pure grift with billions disappearing into thin air. (The FBI has launched a investigation into SF [1]). Couple that with a populace that votes like reality does not exist and has picked some of the worst candidates the country has ever seen and you get out of control crime, homeless on scale seen nowhere on earth(well maybe LA), and general dysfunction from all aspects of basic city services. One of the reasons it has been particularly bad as of late is the exodus of tech which brought in fat revenues to the city coffers and also supported a huge range of side industries from restaurants to gyms to other essential services. Once tech left and its money along with it you get a dead hellscape with out of control crime and city services that are non-existent. The hollowing out of downtown will be just the beginning of a very rapid decline for SF, next to follow up are grocery stores, in about two years expect most of them to abandon the city as shoplifting and robbery makes them very un-profitable, I expect then you start seeing the city population take a giant hit and 20-30% of residents will be gone. By then bankruptcy will be very close and could happen even sooner. 1. FBI corruption charges in SF - https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/sanfrancisco/news/press-releases/fbi-san-francisco-announces-new-charges-plea-deals-in-san-francisco-city-hall-corruption-investigation https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/sanfrancisco/ne...
- dehrmann 3y ago
  > From Willie Brown to Gavin Newsom to Ed Lee, and now London Breed Don't forget Leland Yee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leland_Yee#Arrest_and_conviction_on_corruption_charges_and_arms_trafficking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leland_Yee#Arrest_and_convicti...
40yearoldman 3y ago
It’s simple. You vote in stupid policy makers who have an agenda that does not actually align with the people. Who think all the bad things in the world exist because of successful people. You let them er policies and laws based off feelings, and perceived past aggressions, instead of logic and facts, and this is what happens.
greenyoda 3y ago
Discussed yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36303140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36303140

62 points by philips 3y ago

Two facts from the article that summarize the position. > The mall, co-owned by Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield and Brookfield Corp., has $558 million in outstanding mortgage debt. Management will be turned over to a receiver. > Sales at the Westfield San Francisco Centre fell to $298 million last year from $455 million in 2019, while foot traffic dropped 43%, Morse said. Traffic and sales at other Westfield properties increased during the same period.

vkdelta 3y ago

“ Traffic and sales at other Westfield properties increased during the same period.” This clearly shows there is demand but people prefer to go somewhere else. San Francisco is becoming worse day by day with crime and city maintenance. But mayor wants to somehow not show any link with this and conveniently says it is long coming.

estebank 3y ago
Look at the zoning map[1]. All the red is only commercial buildings. (If you don't want to open the PDF, effectively the entire zone all around Market Street and Union Square, from Folsom to China Town.) Businesses in cities thrive on foot traffic. Those offices are now pretty empty because a ton of employees are still working remotely, so the area is no longer a destination, and no one lives there. It's not shocking to me that people don't go to that mall anymore. In the rest of the city, where people live, businesses are thriving (at least restaurants, those are the easiest to gauge whether they have clients or not, it can be that other kinds of businesses are doing poorly). 1: https://sfplanning.org/resource/zoning-use-districts https://sfplanning.org/resource/zoning-use-districts
- GeneralMayhem 3y ago
  That map is misleading if you just look at the colors, because all the downtown mixed-use zones are grouped under "commercial". The red in SoMa is mostly "C-3-O (SD)", for "commercial 3 - office - special districts", where there "special district" rules allow either offices or residential over street-level retail. There's a bunch of large condo buildings in the red areas between Folsom and Market east of 4th (you're probably at least familiar with the infamous Millennium Tower at Mission and Fremont and the visually distinctive Mira at Folsom and Spear). Along Market in the other direction, "C-3-G" ("Downtown General") also includes apartment buildings, and there's a few that have opened in the past few years between 6th and 9th. North of Market to the east you have more of the traditional financial district, but that's really quite a small area, and it's not where the mall is. You also have to remember tourists, which have actually picked up pretty well post-pandemic. The red areas in around Union Square and in SoMa between 2nd and 5th contain a large fraction of the city's hotel rooms. That's not permanent residents, but it's still a lot of people.
  - estebank 3y ago
    If you look at the population density per neighborhood[1], that area is not any denser than other parts of the city, including the very residential Richmond and Sunset districts, but the number of shops is much higher. That means that all things being equal, shops throughout the city are more spread out and have less competition, allowing them to have an easier time being profitable. To me that tells me that downtown is entirely reliant on people going there from other parts of the city, while the other neighborhoods service their local communities. Furthermore, urban malls rely on foot traffic: malls are either a destination (you go there because you need multiple things so you save multiple trips around town) or they are a place of convenience (they are next to transportation hubs or landmarks with lots of foot traffic). Westfield SF was rarely the first, and lost the later for years due to the pandemic. 1: https://statisticalatlas.com/county/California/San-Francisco-County/Population https://statisticalatlas.com/county/California/San-Francisco...
  - TMWNN 3y ago
    >You also have to remember tourists, which have actually picked up pretty well post-pandemic. The red areas in around Union Square and in SoMa between 2nd and 5th contain a large fraction of the city's hotel rooms. That's not permanent residents, but it's still a lot of people. Tourism *in San Francisco* has not recovered. From <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...>: >Park Hotels said San Francisco’s convention-driven demand is expected to be 40% lower between 2023 and 2027 compared with the pre-pandemic average.
echelon 3y ago
I stayed at the Hotel Zetta last month. It's on the same block as the Westfield. Nearly every night, mentally ill homeless people were screaming at the top of their lungs, making it extremely hard to get to sleep. This lasted until 3 and 4 AM. On the few nights I ventured out after dark, there were people sprawled out all over the sidewalk, and you had to jump around or walk into the street to avoid them. There were lit fires on the bare sidewalk under the Westfield entrance. It's surreal.
- taylodl 3y ago
  "Mentally ill homeless" - have been there since Reagan deinstitutionalized the mentally ill and cut funding for mental illness. The problem has just only gotten worse over time. I remember friends going to San Francisco in the 90's and saying it was awful and they'd never go back. All that to say, this problem has existed for decades. It doesn't explain the recent drop in foot traffic which is largely caused by people no longer going to the office. Getting around in SF isn't the easiest thing to do and if you don't have to go downtown then you're probably not going to. This scenario is playing out in downtowns all across America.
  - RestlessMind 3y ago
    > since Reagan deinstitutionalized the mentally ill and cut funding How long are we going to blame Reagan? Democrats have supermajority in California since 2011-12 ballot reforms, and hypermajority in SF. It's not for a lack of funding neither as SF has spent billions[1] so far. So blaming it on Reagan and funding is just lazy and dishonest. [1] 1.45B per https://abc7news.com/sf-homeless-plan-housing-all-san-francisco-supervisor-rafael-mandelman/12760671/ https://abc7news.com/sf-homeless-plan-housing-all-san-franci...
    - emaginniss 3y ago
      Looking at it from a nationwide perspective, there were two watershed moments in mental health treatment in the late 20th century. The first was in the 60's when JFK (whose sister had been savaged by the mental health institutions) signed legislation changing the requirements for commitment to be "posing a danger to oneself or others." This was a change from the metric of "mentally unfit to live independently in society." The second was in the 80's when Reagan and the Democratic-majority congress defunded and shuttered many of the state-owned mental health facilities. This was a bi-partisan effort by the Republicans, who hated spending money, and the Democrats, who hated how poorly run the facilities were. Nobody has had a really good solution for mental health care in the US since those happened and, as the parent post points out, it is unfair to paint this as "Reagan defunded mental health care."

refurb 3y ago

That's a big deal. Westfield Mall is an anchor for most of the shopping on Market Street. It's actually a bit of an anomaly if you think about the death of malls in the US. Union Square has been emptying out over the past few years. It's not a small number of stores leaving, it's major anchor stores. A new IKEA is supposed to be opened on Market. I wonder if they'll reconsider?

jhbadger 3y ago
In some ways I wonder if this might turn out to be good for SF in the long term. I remember visiting SF in the 1980s and there were a lot of cool, indie stores in places like Union Square. Places that made the place worth visiting. In the 1990s and even more in the 2000s, the place turned into one national chain store next to another.
- dougSF70 3y ago
  The lenders need to revalue the properties so as to lower rents. This could bring an influx of independent stores in. However, downgrading of commercial real estate does have broader ramifications
  - duncan_idaho 3y ago
    The degentrification going on will lower the prices sooner than later.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
      Which will lower tax revenues... Which will lower government services... And SF government services are already abysmal.
- xhkkffbf 3y ago
  The cool, indie stores were the first to go. They can't afford to be so accommodating to theft. The big box stores and the chains were able to cross-subsidize with the profits from the burbs. But now even they can't afford the chaos.

unstatusthequo 3y ago

Last time I was there, staying at Hotel Zetta, I noticed how much more dodgy the area seemed. I can't imagine this is going to help that any. Love SF, but it's going in the wrong direction and I'm glad I left at this point. At some point perhaps the voters will get tired of their city decay. Now we see hotels are even questioning their existence there: https://www.wsj.com/articles/hotel-owners-start-to-write-off-san-francisco-as-business-nosedives-e84c64ef https://www.wsj.com/articles/hotel-owners-start-to-write-off...

jassyr 3y ago

I haven't been to SF in 20 years and reading the news I can't decide whether it's the 10th Circle of Hell or just another misunderstood American city. The comments eventually will support both sides equally no doubt.

carimura 3y ago
As always the story has many angles but overall the trend is not good. There are parts of the city that used to be "just kind of sketchy" which now are basically un-walkable for the average person, especially those who don't know the city. You can't leave anything visible in your car otherwise you'll return to a vehicle with a lot more airflow. And it's clear the commercial occupancy rates haven't returned and may not for some time. None of this is particularly unique to SF, but a lot of things hit SF at once, which makes the incredibly high housing prices and rents just not palatable anymore. It's still a great city and will surely return but the question is where is the bottom?
- xhkkffbf 3y ago
  Mark Roper, the former NASA engineer who designed glitter bombs to catch porch pirates, has also been putting out the bait in San Francisco. It's very sad how quickly the robberies happen. https://abc7news.com/glitter-bomb-package-mark-rober-youtube-video-sf-car-break-in/12594779/ https://abc7news.com/glitter-bomb-package-mark-rober-youtube...
  - dougSF70 3y ago
    Aka, the uni(corn)bomber.
- dougSF70 3y ago
  Realtors are desperately clinging on to the idea of $1000 per sq ft in an average neighborhood...
snotrockets 3y ago
s/misunderstood/misplanned/

caycep 3y ago

Granted, in a way, I always have a hard time seeing "Westfield Mall" and dense/urban city centers as being compatible... All of Rick Caruso's malls in LA are, to be sure, probably profitable but terrible in terms of urban planning

waihtis 3y ago
you obviously haven't been to London then. The city has two gigantic Westfield malls which are completely packed day in, day out.
- matt-attack 3y ago
  Los Angeles is the same. The Westfield in Century City has to be a flagship location and is constantly mobbed.
aworks 3y ago
I live in Menlo Park. We frequently go to SF for cultural/historical/nature reasons. But to go shopping, it's far easier to drive and park at Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto or Santana Row in San Jose. I've stopped in at Westfield before but it was never a destination and I don't remember ever buying anything there.
xeromal 3y ago
How are malls against urban planning? Seems like kind of the opposite no? All the stores you need to visit in one place. As long as they're close to where you live, seems like a win win to me.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  It's a win if you want to dedicate 50% of your city to roads and parking like LA does - a loss otherwise. YMMV
  - CydeWeys 3y ago
    Many urban malls have no parking whatsoever. You get there by transit or walking. I think you're mistaking "mall" for "strip mall".

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

petercooper 3y ago

A bit of a tangent, but the thing that stood out most to me when I visited that mall was the spiral escalator. Apparently Westfield SF had the first long-term installation of one outside of Asia, and I'd certainly never seen one before. It turns out London Underground experimented with the idea in the early 1900s – https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/blog/spiral-escalator-engineering-wonder-ahead-its-time https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/blog/spiral-escalator-engineering... – but it took until the 80s for Mitsubishi Electric to build and install them at scale. Oh, and the second thing that stood out there was the restroom setup. A non-enclosed unisex restroom area with staff managing a line of people and urinals overlooked by said queue. Certainly one of the more interesting ones. I assume to prevent drug taking or people sleeping in there.

bannedbybros 3y ago

[dead]

_jab 3y ago

Something that might not be obvious to onlookers is the extent to which these problems are concentrated in only Downtown SF. Though the situation downtown is undoubtedly bleak, many other neighborhoods in SF have been surprisingly lively lately, such as Mission Bay, Hayes Valley, and Dogpatch. A lot of people, myself included, still like SF, just not the downtown. It's a shame; SF doesn't have any other retail hub, and every store that closes feels like a loss. The question will be to what extent can the damage be contained to downtown, and whether other neighborhoods can help make up for the decay of downtown. I'd consider myself cautiously optimistic.

omginternets 3y ago
Why are you optimistic?
erickhill 3y ago
I lived in SF/East Bay across 10 years (eventually owned a house in El Cerrito) and moved up to Seattle in 2011. I love both the Bay Area and Seattle deeply. What's happening to SF is very similar to what has become of Portland. That, my friends, is not a downtown I would recommend anyone visit until something changes. Simply walking around any time of day it becomes immediately obvious that if you're walking downtown you're either a hapless tourist or homeless. Most of the locals seemingly drive into downtown, jump in and out of stores and restaurants that are still in business, then they drive back home. The suburbs and surrounding areas are gorgeous, but large sections of downtown are just ... terrible. (And often scary.) Seattle was teetering on this fate, but Amazon forced their enormous workforce to come back to the office. And, it produced a lot of blowback from the employees. But, local employees went back. What has that done? It has created a TON of downtown traffic. Not fun at all. But it has also injected the downtown core with (you guessed it) lots of people and money, keeping small businesses downtown alive in some areas. At least for now, Seattle seems to have dodged the ghost town blues that have befallen beautiful SF and Portland.
subsubzero 3y ago
This is not concentrated in only downtown, break ins and store robberies are happening across the entire city. I was there in March and market square and Union square were like something out of a mad max film. My friend who lives in the Marina of all places just left the city for good and had his car broken into multiple times as well as was hit by a car with a driver who was high on drugs. My brother visited golden gate park to ride his bike and when he got back his roof rack was broken by vandals trying to steal it(in broad daylight!). The mission and SOMA are also dangerous and I think really only the sunset is somewhat normal although thieves still target porch packages and break into cars there. I can't vouch for mission bay or Hayes valley so maybe not all parts are terrible but the good areas are not as safe as they used to be.

dadjoker 3y ago

Well, they could do thing like enforce laws, arrest and prosecute criminals, and not allow shoplifting under $950 to have no consequences, but that apparently would be too much to ask. They made a good start be recalling Boudin, but they have a lot more to do.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Natsu 3y ago
They're still going in a different direction: > Senate Bill 553, which was submitted by State Senator Dave Cortese, has been passed by the State Senate and will now progress to policy committees in the State Assembly. Cortese hopes the proposed law will prevent workplace violence and protect staff from being forced by their employers to step-in during robberies. But some store bosses are furious about the plans, with the California Retailers Association mocking the move as an open invitation for thieves "to come in and steal." https://www.newsweek.com/store-retail-violence-robbery-theft-stealing-california-1804565 https://www.newsweek.com/store-retail-violence-robbery-theft...

subsubzero 3y ago

What you have is a notoriously dysfunctional govt. that has been borderline criminal running the city(into the ground) for close to 30+ years now. From Willie Brown to Gavin Newsom to Ed Lee, and now London Breed you have had a political machine creating pure grift with billions disappearing into thin air. (The FBI has launched a investigation into SF [1]). Couple that with a populace that votes like reality does not exist and has picked some of the worst candidates the country has ever seen and you get out of control crime, homeless on scale seen nowhere on earth(well maybe LA), and general dysfunction from all aspects of basic city services. One of the reasons it has been particularly bad as of late is the exodus of tech which brought in fat revenues to the city coffers and also supported a huge range of side industries from restaurants to gyms to other essential services. Once tech left and its money along with it you get a dead hellscape with out of control crime and city services that are non-existent. The hollowing out of downtown will be just the beginning of a very rapid decline for SF, next to follow up are grocery stores, in about two years expect most of them to abandon the city as shoplifting and robbery makes them very un-profitable, I expect then you start seeing the city population take a giant hit and 20-30% of residents will be gone. By then bankruptcy will be very close and could happen even sooner. 1. FBI corruption charges in SF - https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/sanfrancisco/news/press-releases/fbi-san-francisco-announces-new-charges-plea-deals-in-san-francisco-city-hall-corruption-investigation https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/sanfrancisco/ne...

dehrmann 3y ago
> From Willie Brown to Gavin Newsom to Ed Lee, and now London Breed Don't forget Leland Yee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leland_Yee#Arrest_and_conviction_on_corruption_charges_and_arms_trafficking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leland_Yee#Arrest_and_convicti...

40yearoldman 3y ago

It’s simple. You vote in stupid policy makers who have an agenda that does not actually align with the people. Who think all the bad things in the world exist because of successful people. You let them er policies and laws based off feelings, and perceived past aggressions, instead of logic and facts, and this is what happens.

greenyoda 3y ago

Discussed yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36303140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36303140