8 ms·

We urgently need to discuss Westfield: Emails on safety problems at downtown SF

47 points by g42gregory 3y ago

onetokeoverthe 3y ago
[dead]
ed 3y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20230615202717/https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/westfield-mall-crime-safety-18150656.php https://web.archive.org/web/20230615202717/https://www.sfchr...
gingerrr 3y ago
edit: wow I can't read, apparently. or scrolled too aggressively when reading, either way they absolutely mentioned it. -- Seems like journalistic malpractice that all these recent pieces trumpeting the SF downtown location closing don't also mention that Westfield announced a year and 2 months ago they're selling their entire US mall portfolio by 2024 to focus on Europe. https://smmirror.com/2022/04/french-based-owners-of-westfield-mall-chain-to-sell-american-properties/ https://smmirror.com/2022/04/french-based-owners-of-westfiel...
- throwawaywu 3y ago
  Selling an asset is much different than shutting down what is a now a liability.
  - gingerrr 3y ago
    Where did you read the mall is closing? The final paragraph in the linked article indicates things are staying open, Westfield isn't shutting anything down, just deciding to back out of repaying the remainder of their loan. It's a functional foreclosure, which divests them of their interest much like selling an asset would - do you just mean it's "much different" because of the amount of money they make/lose? Trying to understand the distinction you're making as it relates to this article and their preexisting plans to exit the market.
    - andromeduck 3y ago
      They've lost all their major tennants and defaulting on their loans because of public & employee safety made the business unviable, what makes you think they'll stay open even if they weren't leaving? The general area has also seen a huge wave of closures including pretty much every anchor tennant with IKEA being the only major business to buck the trend so far. This isn't a just a "business is going okay but we over leveraged" situation.
      - gingerrr 3y ago
        > what makes you think they'll stay open even if they weren't leaving? The fact that their lender probably wants to squeeze any return they can out of it and they stand to lose far more money leaving it with lights off than at least letting it limp along until they can get someone else on the hook for it, to start. It could be that the lender also writes off the loss and just shutters the mall, but usually properties in foreclosure stay open because they want to claw back as much make-up ROI as possible on an already down position.
        andromeduck 3y ago
        How is the lender going to deal with rampant retail theft, auto break ins, and near zero traffic owing to general public safety concerns and a lack of anchor tennants to draw traffic? A lot of these buisnesses were largely supported by tourism traffic from asia & white collar work travel buisness and conventions all of which are no longer happening because of public safetey concerns. It's going to take years before the city does anything.
- evanelias 3y ago
  The middle of the article does directly mention this already. It says "Westfield’s parent company said last year that it planned to sell all of its U.S. malls by 2024 to focus on its operations in Europe." It also links to a prior San Francisco Chronicle article about this.
  - gingerrr 3y ago
    fundamental reading comprehension failure on my part, thanks for the correction.
- cscurmudgeon 3y ago
  Selling (elsewhere) vs abandoning to lender (SF). There is a huge difference between the two.
  - gingerrr 3y ago
    To whom? Yes to Westfield's bottom line, but both you and another commenter have replied this as if it has self-evident corollaries. Why is the difference meaningful to anyone who isn't the corporation already planning on exiting the market? Would be a helpful exposition to better understand what you're both trying to indicate with pointing out that 2 different things are different. edit: I'm asking bc the article doesn't really explain that either and I'm not sure why this means anything beyond Westfield couldn't find a buyer at the price they wanted, or thought this was the simplest/fastest way to divest
    - andromeduck 3y ago
      It wouldn't matter if the mall still had some anchor tennants and traffic was good but neither is the case.
    - inimino 3y ago
      selling: "we are not the right owner for this asset" foreclosure: "the current owner, the world's expert on making this location profitable, concluded it can't be done" You can argue that it's reductive, obviously that's true but this is the "self-evident" optics people are responding to. (Not the GP but HTH.)
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - gingerrr 3y ago
        Ah ok, I may have been trying to look too deeply then if they were just alluding to the noxious side effects of any write-off. I guess this seemed like the obvious next step for them, to me. Considering recent store closures, operational costs have to be close to outpacing revenue at this point so waiting for a potential buyer wouldn't make sense while losing money daily. Especially not when you already planned to divest of the asset - you'd save yourself trouble and time and write off the loss. So I got curious about what other ramifications I was missing - like maybe those replies were insinuating the foreclosure was an first trickle of a broader collapse in commercial real estate, or something else that wasn't just "SF downtown bad" again. Thanks for clarifying!
andromeduck 3y ago
Progs: People should feel safe where they work. Workplaces should be free from violence & Harassment. Businesses that can't guarantee employee safety should be shut down. Businesses: Our workers are being harassed daily, several have been held at knifepoint. Please help. Progs: That's just an isolated incident. Crime is down. Businesses: People don't feel safe and there doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it so we're shutting down. Progs: Wow I guess you're just not really committed to this city SMH.
- q1w2 3y ago
  I agree, but safety should ideally be the responsibility of local government. They have the legal authority to use force to enforce safety. If the city cannot provide basic safety for its citizens, then corporations WILL leave, and salaried residents will follow them.
  - EricE 3y ago
    They could if they wanted to; they don't want to. And there are a bunch of people who agree with them. So let it fail - it might already be too late, especially with the dominance of remote work for cities like SF to pull out of their death spirals. Cities always sucked. I always suspected a large amount of people crowing about how great cities are were simply gaslighting because they felt trapped in them. And what do you know? As soon as COVID and remote work gave people a real choice the mass exodus began. Actions speak far louder than words indeed.
    - evanelias 3y ago
      Just because you personally dislike city living, does not mean that the massive number of people who love cities are gaslighting. People left cities during the pandemic because it was a pandemic. This isn't complicated to unpack, there's no secret motivations here. When there's a highly contagious disease around for a long time, all of the benefits of cities temporarily either closed or became a health risk: public transit, cultural institutions, restaurants, proximity to workplaces, etc. And meanwhile all the drawbacks to cities were amplified: smaller living quarters, higher population density, less access to private outdoor space, harder to have your own car. In many major US cities, people moved back in droves over the past couple years. Rents soared and rental vacancy rates plummeted. That doesn't line up with your statements at all. SF may well be in a death spiral, but nothing about this situation can be applied to all cities in general!
ilaksh 3y ago
I'm sure I don't actually understand the details but the way it's been presented before is that, for whatever reasons, criminals and those with severe mental issues are now not kept in jail or institutions but rather left to roam the streets. The mental illness policy has been around for a long time but the idea not to jail criminals is a bit newer. I think that not jailing criminals is related to bail bond system reform or something. Not an expert but I am guessing that they need a more realistic policy that does not automatically free habitual offenders. They probably need more jails and a much more efficient legal system. And a new mental health policy and massive increase in funding for institutions. As well as a much more effective benefits system to prevent homelessness. And probably much less tolerance for drug sales etc. Also the general economic decline needs to be righted. I guess considering the severity of all of those problems and the concentration in that area, it's remarkable that businesses can operate at all.
- andromeduck 3y ago
  It's because the far left that dominate all levels of SF/Cali politics, including many senators, city supervisors, city attorneys, police commissioner, judges and non profits - don't believe in "carceeal justice" and so refuse to do anything about it. A common belief is that prison is criminogenic, because people who spend more time in prison tend to reoffend more often but this largely gets the causality backwards. This causes them to ignore/deny the pareto distribution of crime that underlies most criminal justice systems so we have a fairly sizable population of serial violence reoffenders that are just caught and released on a weekly/monthly basis until someone dies.
- anon373839 3y ago
  > and massive increase in funding for institutions I’m very doubtful this is the way forward. SF spends and squanders an absolutely eye-watering amount of money on its problems. The money appears to support committees and other layers of bureaucracy that will only grow more baroque if you give them more money.
- rufus_foreman 3y ago
  >> the way it's been presented before is that, for whatever reasons, criminals and those with severe mental issues are now not kept in jail or institutions but rather left to roam the streets. The mental illness policy has been around for a long time but the idea not to jail criminals is a bit newer. Here's the graph of the first step, the deinstitutionalization of people from mental hospitals and the reinstutionalization of people in prisons: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FwVXgslXoAAny9T?format=png&name=small https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FwVXgslXoAAny9T?format=png&name=... That was pretty much complete by 2000. Now we're in the step of the deinstitutionalization of people from prisons. During none of these steps were any actual problems solved. The late 70's and the 80's were a great time for people who liked being on the streets though. I'm pretty sure the people who are living on the streets now will look back on this time with fondness in a decade or two.
EricE 3y ago
Sadly SF will literally have to burn down at this point before it gets better. The amount of people making excuses for the idiotic policies that caused this whole mess is just mind blowing. So glad I last saw SF in the late 90's before it really went to crap (literally).
blackqueeriroh 3y ago
If you want people to stop doing crime and stealing things or doing drugs or living on the streets, it’s simple: 1. House them in safe and private housing. 2. Give them a basic income so they can live like human beings. 3. Make sure they have quality medical and emotional care. I get so tired of people acting as if people like living on the street.

47 points by g42gregory 3y ago

[dead]

ed 3y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20230615202717/https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/westfield-mall-crime-safety-18150656.php https://web.archive.org/web/20230615202717/https://www.sfchr...

gingerrr 3y ago

edit: wow I can't read, apparently. or scrolled too aggressively when reading, either way they absolutely mentioned it. -- Seems like journalistic malpractice that all these recent pieces trumpeting the SF downtown location closing don't also mention that Westfield announced a year and 2 months ago they're selling their entire US mall portfolio by 2024 to focus on Europe. https://smmirror.com/2022/04/french-based-owners-of-westfield-mall-chain-to-sell-american-properties/ https://smmirror.com/2022/04/french-based-owners-of-westfiel...

throwawaywu 3y ago
Selling an asset is much different than shutting down what is a now a liability.
- gingerrr 3y ago
  Where did you read the mall is closing? The final paragraph in the linked article indicates things are staying open, Westfield isn't shutting anything down, just deciding to back out of repaying the remainder of their loan. It's a functional foreclosure, which divests them of their interest much like selling an asset would - do you just mean it's "much different" because of the amount of money they make/lose? Trying to understand the distinction you're making as it relates to this article and their preexisting plans to exit the market.
  - andromeduck 3y ago
    They've lost all their major tennants and defaulting on their loans because of public & employee safety made the business unviable, what makes you think they'll stay open even if they weren't leaving? The general area has also seen a huge wave of closures including pretty much every anchor tennant with IKEA being the only major business to buck the trend so far. This isn't a just a "business is going okay but we over leveraged" situation.
    - gingerrr 3y ago
      > what makes you think they'll stay open even if they weren't leaving? The fact that their lender probably wants to squeeze any return they can out of it and they stand to lose far more money leaving it with lights off than at least letting it limp along until they can get someone else on the hook for it, to start. It could be that the lender also writes off the loss and just shutters the mall, but usually properties in foreclosure stay open because they want to claw back as much make-up ROI as possible on an already down position.
      - andromeduck 3y ago
        How is the lender going to deal with rampant retail theft, auto break ins, and near zero traffic owing to general public safety concerns and a lack of anchor tennants to draw traffic? A lot of these buisnesses were largely supported by tourism traffic from asia & white collar work travel buisness and conventions all of which are no longer happening because of public safetey concerns. It's going to take years before the city does anything.
evanelias 3y ago
The middle of the article does directly mention this already. It says "Westfield’s parent company said last year that it planned to sell all of its U.S. malls by 2024 to focus on its operations in Europe." It also links to a prior San Francisco Chronicle article about this.
- gingerrr 3y ago
  fundamental reading comprehension failure on my part, thanks for the correction.
cscurmudgeon 3y ago
Selling (elsewhere) vs abandoning to lender (SF). There is a huge difference between the two.
- gingerrr 3y ago
  To whom? Yes to Westfield's bottom line, but both you and another commenter have replied this as if it has self-evident corollaries. Why is the difference meaningful to anyone who isn't the corporation already planning on exiting the market? Would be a helpful exposition to better understand what you're both trying to indicate with pointing out that 2 different things are different. edit: I'm asking bc the article doesn't really explain that either and I'm not sure why this means anything beyond Westfield couldn't find a buyer at the price they wanted, or thought this was the simplest/fastest way to divest
  - andromeduck 3y ago
    It wouldn't matter if the mall still had some anchor tennants and traffic was good but neither is the case.
  - inimino 3y ago
    selling: "we are not the right owner for this asset" foreclosure: "the current owner, the world's expert on making this location profitable, concluded it can't be done" You can argue that it's reductive, obviously that's true but this is the "self-evident" optics people are responding to. (Not the GP but HTH.)
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - gingerrr 3y ago
      Ah ok, I may have been trying to look too deeply then if they were just alluding to the noxious side effects of any write-off. I guess this seemed like the obvious next step for them, to me. Considering recent store closures, operational costs have to be close to outpacing revenue at this point so waiting for a potential buyer wouldn't make sense while losing money daily. Especially not when you already planned to divest of the asset - you'd save yourself trouble and time and write off the loss. So I got curious about what other ramifications I was missing - like maybe those replies were insinuating the foreclosure was an first trickle of a broader collapse in commercial real estate, or something else that wasn't just "SF downtown bad" again. Thanks for clarifying!

andromeduck 3y ago

Progs: People should feel safe where they work. Workplaces should be free from violence & Harassment. Businesses that can't guarantee employee safety should be shut down. Businesses: Our workers are being harassed daily, several have been held at knifepoint. Please help. Progs: That's just an isolated incident. Crime is down. Businesses: People don't feel safe and there doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it so we're shutting down. Progs: Wow I guess you're just not really committed to this city SMH.

q1w2 3y ago
I agree, but safety should ideally be the responsibility of local government. They have the legal authority to use force to enforce safety. If the city cannot provide basic safety for its citizens, then corporations WILL leave, and salaried residents will follow them.
- EricE 3y ago
  They could if they wanted to; they don't want to. And there are a bunch of people who agree with them. So let it fail - it might already be too late, especially with the dominance of remote work for cities like SF to pull out of their death spirals. Cities always sucked. I always suspected a large amount of people crowing about how great cities are were simply gaslighting because they felt trapped in them. And what do you know? As soon as COVID and remote work gave people a real choice the mass exodus began. Actions speak far louder than words indeed.
  - evanelias 3y ago
    Just because you personally dislike city living, does not mean that the massive number of people who love cities are gaslighting. People left cities during the pandemic because it was a pandemic. This isn't complicated to unpack, there's no secret motivations here. When there's a highly contagious disease around for a long time, all of the benefits of cities temporarily either closed or became a health risk: public transit, cultural institutions, restaurants, proximity to workplaces, etc. And meanwhile all the drawbacks to cities were amplified: smaller living quarters, higher population density, less access to private outdoor space, harder to have your own car. In many major US cities, people moved back in droves over the past couple years. Rents soared and rental vacancy rates plummeted. That doesn't line up with your statements at all. SF may well be in a death spiral, but nothing about this situation can be applied to all cities in general!

ilaksh 3y ago

I'm sure I don't actually understand the details but the way it's been presented before is that, for whatever reasons, criminals and those with severe mental issues are now not kept in jail or institutions but rather left to roam the streets. The mental illness policy has been around for a long time but the idea not to jail criminals is a bit newer. I think that not jailing criminals is related to bail bond system reform or something. Not an expert but I am guessing that they need a more realistic policy that does not automatically free habitual offenders. They probably need more jails and a much more efficient legal system. And a new mental health policy and massive increase in funding for institutions. As well as a much more effective benefits system to prevent homelessness. And probably much less tolerance for drug sales etc. Also the general economic decline needs to be righted. I guess considering the severity of all of those problems and the concentration in that area, it's remarkable that businesses can operate at all.

andromeduck 3y ago
It's because the far left that dominate all levels of SF/Cali politics, including many senators, city supervisors, city attorneys, police commissioner, judges and non profits - don't believe in "carceeal justice" and so refuse to do anything about it. A common belief is that prison is criminogenic, because people who spend more time in prison tend to reoffend more often but this largely gets the causality backwards. This causes them to ignore/deny the pareto distribution of crime that underlies most criminal justice systems so we have a fairly sizable population of serial violence reoffenders that are just caught and released on a weekly/monthly basis until someone dies.
anon373839 3y ago
> and massive increase in funding for institutions I’m very doubtful this is the way forward. SF spends and squanders an absolutely eye-watering amount of money on its problems. The money appears to support committees and other layers of bureaucracy that will only grow more baroque if you give them more money.
rufus_foreman 3y ago
>> the way it's been presented before is that, for whatever reasons, criminals and those with severe mental issues are now not kept in jail or institutions but rather left to roam the streets. The mental illness policy has been around for a long time but the idea not to jail criminals is a bit newer. Here's the graph of the first step, the deinstitutionalization of people from mental hospitals and the reinstutionalization of people in prisons: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FwVXgslXoAAny9T?format=png&name=small https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FwVXgslXoAAny9T?format=png&name=... That was pretty much complete by 2000. Now we're in the step of the deinstitutionalization of people from prisons. During none of these steps were any actual problems solved. The late 70's and the 80's were a great time for people who liked being on the streets though. I'm pretty sure the people who are living on the streets now will look back on this time with fondness in a decade or two.

EricE 3y ago

Sadly SF will literally have to burn down at this point before it gets better. The amount of people making excuses for the idiotic policies that caused this whole mess is just mind blowing. So glad I last saw SF in the late 90's before it really went to crap (literally).

blackqueeriroh 3y ago

If you want people to stop doing crime and stealing things or doing drugs or living on the streets, it’s simple: 1. House them in safe and private housing. 2. Give them a basic income so they can live like human beings. 3. Make sure they have quality medical and emotional care. I get so tired of people acting as if people like living on the street.