How San Francisco’s Westfield Became a Ghost Mall: The Dying Center Where 75 PERCENT of Units Are Empty and More Stores Are Closing, as Shoppers Describe a ‘Dodgy’ Area Overrun by Homeless People Who Left Them” scared”

The mall’s cavernous, marble-floored atrium is eerily quiet. There is not a single shopper in sight and a litany of abandoned stores lie mostly empty, save for a few leftover cardboard boxes or faded signs that serve as reminders of the former occupants.

This is not a scene from a post-apocalyptic TV show. And it’s not the so-called “dead mall” in some forgotten corner of America.

This is the palatial San Francisco Center on a Friday afternoon in mid-January, when just a few years ago the luxurious complex would have been packed with shoppers enjoying the post-Christmas sales.

Today, this former retail gem in the heart of one of America’s most iconic cities is literally a shell of its former self.

Businesses have left in droves (this month alone, five have closed or announced they plan to do so) and occupancy is a paltry 25 percent. Footfall has halved since last year, and as shops and customers left, homeless people moved in and drug use and crime increased.

“Five years ago, this place was thriving,” Tara Button, who was shopping with her daughter to celebrate her college admission, told DailyMail.com.

Button, a 49-year-old business owner who lives an hour’s drive away in San Jose, last visited the center in 2019. But seeing the worn-out shell it has become, she and her daughter said they would shorten their visit, with No plans to return again.

“It’s a little shocking, it’s very sad,” Button said, before her daughter described the “dodgy” downtown streets they had to walk through to get to the mall. “We were scared, which bothers me,” Button added.

DailyMail.com’s visit on January 19 coincided with the closure of several stores within the mall. Adidas left a week early, Aldo closed on the 21st, J. Crew closed the next day, and Lucky Brand’s last day is Monday, January 29.

Added to these departures are at least 100 more from the shopping center and its surroundings since covid.

Nordstrom’s closure in August was arguably the most damaging. The retailer once occupied 350,000 feet of the San Francisco Center on five floors, making it the largest Nordstrom in the United States.

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

The rapid decline has caused Downtown San Francisco to lose $1 billion in value since 2016, and the 1.45 million-square-foot shopping center is now worth just $290 million.

Employees at stores that closed expressed sadness, but not surprise, as they explained how declining foot traffic and rising crime made the exits inevitable. There were 5.6 million visits to the mall in 2022, up from 9.7 million in 2019, and staff say the decline continued last year.

“Traffic from last year to this year has been reduced by half,” said Mariana López, 20, an Aldo clerk, as she tended to the empty store. Signs were scattered among displays of high-heeled shoes and leather handbags to inform customers of the impending closure.

“And we don’t have security guards at Aldo, so it’s easy to get robbed,” said López, who works alongside his studies. The robberies occurred about twice a week, he said, adding that his cell phone was once stolen while he was helping a customer.

During the conversation, a couple of young women entered the store and browsed for a few minutes before leaving empty-handed. Another buyer came, but only to return an unwanted purchase.

“It’s sad,” said Lopez, who will be moved to Aldo’s store in the city’s Stonestown Galleria. ‘When I got here I was in high school. There was more traffic and you could see more customers come in and you could build a relationship.

‘It’s not so safe. The manager has been here 15 years and almost cried when he received the notice.’

At Madewell, whose storefront was also adorned with “goodbye” signs, one staff member lamented the “snowball effect” of decreased traffic and increased homelessness and crime.

‘When you have empty spaces and stores, people who live on the streets come in. It’s like a snowball effect. Compared to last year, our foot traffic is down 50 percent,” said the worker, who asked not to be identified.

‘Office spaces [in the city] They are empty and that is a problem. There are thousands of people who no longer come here every day.’

The worker is referring to the unfortunately high office vacancy rate in San Francisco, which in December was 35.9 percent. That situation is compounded by the departure of several large firms, including accounting giant KPMG, which announced earlier this month that it will abandon its eponymous $400 million building downtown.

Store assistant Madewell said the team learned six weeks ago that the retailer would not renew its lease at the San Francisco Center.

“Once the area started to seem unsafe for people, people no longer want to shop here,” the worker added. “We were getting a lot of people living on the streets and having mental health crises and we shouldn’t have to deal with that, but we did a lot.”

Admittedly, the presence of security guards appears to have increased in recent months.

But it’s too little, too late for the mall, whose chronic lack of customers has created the strange reality that there are often as many security guards as shoppers.

Outside the entrance to Bloomingdale’s, now the mall’s largest tenant after Nordstrom’s departure, two police officers stand watch, hired by the store as part of the police department’s 10-B program, which allows businesses to hire police officers off duty to work overtime. .

Officers said it had been a quiet shift for them. Maybe the deterrent was working. Or maybe even the petty thieves can’t cope with the lethargic atmosphere hanging over this dying shopping center.