Visitors take photos of the Emporium dome in the San Francisco Centre shopping mall Thursday, one of its final days of operation. The city’s largest shopping mall now sits empty after closing ahead of schedule.
Dan Hernandez/S.F. Chronicle
The city’s largest mall, which had planned to shut down at the end of the weekend, was locked and dark Saturday morning.
A sign posted at the entrance to San Francisco Centre said the downtown shopping hub was “closed until further notice.”
Article continues below this ad
An employee at Ecco, the mall’s last remaining tenant, confirmed that the shoe store — and the mall itself — had permanently shuttered earlier than expected, ahead of Monday’s previously announced closure date.The early shutdown marks the final chapter for what was once San Francisco’s largest and most prominent shopping mall, after years of vacancies and tenant departures hollowed out a downtown retail landmark.
San Francisco Centre had been in the process of winding down for months under its new owners, a group of lenders, which purchased the mall’s debt in November. By this week, Ecco was the only remaining tenant in what was once a bustling, multistory retail hub at Market and Fifth streets.
A sign posted at the entrance to San Francisco Centre on Saturday announces that the mall has closed.
Courtesy of Nicole Frugé
Pedestrians walked along Fifth Street past the mall Saturday afternoon, occasionally meandering toward a series of doors covered with signs that said the building was closed.
San Francisco Chronicle Logo
Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.
Add Preferred Source
“It was supposed to be open until at least tomorrow,” said Simran Gunsi, 25, who lives a block away from the now-shuttered mall. “I wish they’d said the exact time it was closing.”
Article continues below this ad
Gunsi had been hoping to get her eyebrows shaped one last time at Brow Smart Salon, which had closed earlier. She’d bought a six pack of treatments, she said, before learning that the mall was closing permanently.
She’d moved to San Francisco three years ago, she said, when she found the mall was a fun, convenient place to shop, even if it did seem a little rundown.
When she moved to South of Market from North Beach last year, she’d been pleasantly surprised to discover that the neighborhood wasn’t as bad as she’d thought it would be, and she’d hoped it might recover.
“It was so convenient and so close by!” she said. “I feel like all the businesses moved from here to Union Square. Now I just go there.”
The southwestern basement entrance to San Francisco Centre from the Powell Street BART Station had been blocked off days before the mall closed for good.
Dan Hernandez/S.F. Chronicle
Earlier in the week, BART closed the entrance connecting Powell Street Station directly to the mall, sealing off a passageway that for decades funneled commuters and shoppers into the shopping center. The closure fueled speculation online that the shutdown was imminent.
Article continues below this ad
The mall had originally announced it would close at the end of business Sunday, when Ecco was expected to shut its doors. Instead, the closure came early, bringing a quicker-than-anticipated end to the shopping center’s long decline.
San Francisco Centre has struggled for years with falling foot traffic, a problem exacerbated by the pandemic and the shift to remote work. The downturn in activity around the Powell Street corridor contributed to the departures of major anchor tenants Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s, accelerating what many retail experts have described as a downward spiral.
Brokerage firm CBRE has been hired to market the property, though real estate experts have cautioned that redeveloping the massive, transit-linked complex would be extremely expensive and technically challenging.
What happens next remains uncertain. City officials and planners have floated ideas ranging from housing and arts venues to large-scale entertainment uses, but any redevelopment of the massive, transit-linked site would likely take years and require significant investment.
Article continues below this ad
Mall management did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the early closure.
