After 20 years in San Francisco Westfield is giving up

Westfield is will be pulling out from operating the city’s largest mall. The company had owned and operated San Francisco Centre on Market Street for more than two decades. But a steep decline in shoppers and other “challenging operating conditions” heavily impacted sales numbers, according to Westfield.

San Francisco. 

 A spokesperson for Westfield wrote Monday, “Given the challenging operating conditions in downtown San Francisco, which have led to declines in sales, occupancy and foot traffic, we have made the difficult decision to begin the process to transfer management of the shopping center to our lender to allow them to appoint a receiver to operate the property going forward.”

The city is regularly at or near the top of rankings of the priciest places to live in the US. Just before the Covid-19 pandemic, the median rent was $4,500, almost 3 times the national average. The list price of homes for sale averaged $1.3 million, 4.4 times the US median list price. Once a bustling retail center in the heart of San Francisco, the San Francisco Centre has taken a significant hit in the past few years. Total sales have fallen from $455 million in 2019 to $298 million in 2022, and foot traffic has plunged from 9.7 million visits in 2019 to 5.6 million in 2022, according to Westfield.

Last month, a Westfield spokesperson attributed Nordstrom’s closing to “unsafe conditions for customers, retailers, and employees.”

 said San Francisco’s “path to recovery remains clouded and elongated by major challenges.” Some of those challenges include high office vacancies, a weaker-than-expected convention calendar and “concerns over street conditions,” according to Baltimore

Westfield’s exit marks another significant setback for San Francisco, which saw its economy hit hard by the pandemic as many Silicon Valley companies allowed flexible work-from-home policies, resulting in many white-collar workers filtering out of the city. Three years later, corporate America has yet to return in the same numbers: office vacancies in San Francisco have reached a 30-year high.

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Sarah H

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