San Francisco’s largest mall has closed, ending a several-years-long saga in which the once-celebrated downtown property became a symbol of the city’s struggles following the COVID-19 pandemic. Now officials aim to make it another kind of emblem.
The city is papering one side of the nine-story San Francisco Centre with a block-long public mural. Over the past week, workers attached vinyl panels to the glass facade of the shuttered former Bloomingdale’s facing Mission Street. The store has sat empty since the mall’s last anchor tenant shut in spring, and the retail center was padlocked by Sunday, a sad end to a property that in brighter times seemed to represent San Francisco’s success as the nation’s tech capital.
The Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco and the San Francisco Downtown Development Corp. aim to counter some two years of negative headlines about disappearing shoppers and visitors, and fleeing tenants, by sponsoring the public tapestry ahead of the Super Bowl, to be played Feb. 8 in nearby Santa Clara, to symbolize the city's enduring creativity.
The work by artist Jeffrey Gibson — composed of colorful stills from a video installation titled “This Burning World" — will span a full block on Mission between Fourth and Fifth streets, measuring 433 feet by 66 feet. Backers say the piece spotlights downtown's recovery in recent months with the artificial intelligence boom and the return of shoppers, tourists and office workers to the commercial center as crowds descend on the Bay Area for a widely watched sporting event.
“Public art changes how people experience a street,” Shola Olatoye, chief executive of the Downtown Development Corp., said in a statement. She said the nonprofit aimed to “create small moments that attract people and give them a reason to spend time here.”
A nascent recovery that’s taken hold in the city in recent months wasn't able to save San Francisco Centre, long referred to locally as the Westfield after the mall’s former co-owner. Landlords Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield and Brookfield Properties walked away from the mall in 2023 following the departure of Nordstrom, the mall’s longtime signature anchor tenant, which had been a driving force behind the mall dating back to its opening in 1988.
At San Francisco Centre, tenants received eviction notices in December, shortly after a group of lenders foreclosed on the struggling 1.2 million-square-foot shopping mall and listed it for sale as a “blank slate” that could be converted to housing, offices or other uses. At the time, it was less than 10% leased. In the future, the property could still have some shops, but it isn't being sold to remain as the city's biggest purely retail center.
Quiet end
The property is more to some than just a big mall. Bay Area residents showed up at the property Sunday afternoon for an impromptu goodbye party — only to find it already padlocked after management quietly shuttered the vacant shopping center earlier than expected. Residents danced to hip-hop blaring from a boom box outside the Market Street entrance and shared stories.
Knowing the place the property holds for those in the region, the civic groups’ strategy is to use the installation by a renowned artist to “draw people into a prominent downtown space” and build on a larger ongoing effort to promote downtown San Francisco as an arts and culture zone.
City leaders and neighborhood groups have looked to help jump-start a neighborhood turnaround with arts programming funded by public and private money. A number of AI startups have moved into a growing cluster in the bustling Yerba Buena district, and Union Square, the city’s premier shopping area, has drawn a series of prominent new tenants as San Francisco real estate heats up again.
The new mural aims to connect the nine-story vacant retail property with nearby cultural institutions such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Museum of the African Diaspora and the Moscone Center.
Broader arts and culture community initiatives like the Downtown First Thursdays street festival seek to draw people downtown for reasons other than to shop and go to work, especially ahead of the Super Bowl, Pro Bowl and FIFA World Cup.
The area is set to host multiple days of Super Bowl programming Feb. 3-7 from the National Football League and the Bay Area Host Committee, including the NFL’s official fan experience party and the Pro Bowl Games at the Moscone Center.
“It’s a beautiful and dynamic piece that enlivens the surrounding area and strengthens our neighborhood identity as the city’s focal point of arts and culture,” said Scott Rowitz, executive director of the Yerba Buena Partnership neighborhood group.
Unclear future
The future of the 1.2 million square feet of retail space inside the mall remains unclear.
The property is being marketed for sale by CBRE on behalf of its new owners, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase.
They control the mall following its foreclosure late last year. Calls for offers are expected to take place soon.
The real estate services firm released a sales brochure pitching the property, one of the largest multilevel urban indoor malls in the United States, as a “unique platform for large-scale reinvention.”
What form that should take has become a subject of debate in recent months in San Francisco.
Ideas for the mall’s future have included tearing it down and building a soccer stadium, converting it to lab space or building a theme park at the site.
Planners have generally dismissed the often-suggested idea of turning the space into housing, citing a variety of logistical issues. One complicating factor: The mall sits on land owned by the San Francisco Unified School District, which would add extra costs for a developer of the property.
The art installation is set to remain in place for at least the next year as the city looks to put a more inspirational spin on a sign of one-time economic strength.