San Francisco financial district at night with the bay illuminated by the full moon. (Photo: CAN BALCIOGLU/Shutterstock)
Three More Major Retail Locations Announce San Francisco Closures
L’Occitane, Sephora at SF Centre, and The North Face at Union Square closing
By Evan Symon, March 7, 2024 5:49 pm
Several stores San Francisco announced on Wednesday that they would be closing this month, including cosmetics companies L’Occitane and Sephora at San Francisco Centre and outdoor equipment company The North Face at Union Square, becoming the latest casualties in the continuing decline of stores in San Francisco.
Both the San Francisco Centre Mall, soon to be renamed Emporium Centre San Francisco, and Union Square have been losing businesses for the last several years. At the mall, many large retailers, such as Nordstrom and Cinemark left last year. In the last few months, Hollister, Addidas, and The Lego Store have also left.
Meanwhile in Union Square, companies have also been fleeing in the wake of the 2021 and 2022 smash and grab robberies that plagued the area. While multiple boutique stores have left, the biggest recent departure was only a week ago when Macy’s announced that it would be leaving their location of 95 years.
The reason for the departures have been all over the map, ranging from high taxes to low business to the general decline of retail to online shopping competition. But the baseline through every closure so far this decade has been one either stated or heavily hinted thing: crime. Break-ins, shoplifting, flash mob robberies, and so much more have caused small retailers and big retailers like Walgreens and Target to leave for years. The city has denied that that is the reason for years, but employees, managers, and others have told the Globe that no matter what is said, crime has at least been a factor. For some industries, like food stores, San Francisco has been hit so hard that a new ordinance currently being looked at would require companies to give six months notice of a closure to help plan around it.
It was amid all of this that the newest closures were announced on Wednesday. L’Occitane all but left the mall as of Thursday, with Sephora planning to be out for good by mid-April. While companies that normally leave usually have statements as to why, neither company has given one as of yet. In Union Square, The North Face will be closing down on March 17th, also with no announcement as to why. However, with Union Square and the mall at high vacancy rates, and expected to be at even worse levels later this year as leases expire, it doesn’t take a genius to see as to why.
More closures in SF
“I mean crime. Duh,” explained Bay Area security consultant and former policeman Frank Ma to the Globe on Thursday. “The mall, well, the mall is it’s own thing, but I have talked with managers who used to work at store there and are now elsewhere in the city, and they said the mall was dead. No customers, but also the worry of being robbed downtown or having their stores, for the lack of a better word, plundered. Look at all the stores that have left there. They either are very niche and susceptible to low traffic or they sell items that are easily stolen. No one likes shopping in malls so much anymore, and that worry only goes up with crime, Or in San Francisco’s case, crime around the mall.”
“Union Square is something I can speak more to. I have done security consultations around there and all owners want to talk with me about is how to avoid being robbed. What kind of glass best protects from robberies. Who the best security companies are. Are there ways to deter thefts. It’s horrifying. And places that aren’t affected are seeing less people walk by because they’re afraid of getting robbed. So, one way or another, it’s this crime affecting people and their shopping habits. Why risk one of these robberies when you can just order it from Amazon? That’s the mentality people are getting more and more of. Mayor Breed and others in the city keep saying to go downtown and shop, but people still don’t feel safe. They’re going elsewhere. That’s why all these stores are leaving. You can have the most secure store in the city, but people won’t show up if they know that there are addicts around ready to jump them.”
More retail closures are expected in the city later this year as leases expire.
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The city is ripe for disaster.
Good people did not cause this,
so I pray for good people everywhere.
Just as the San Francisco residents are beginning to wake up and smell the coffee and very gradually change their voting habits, we’ll be reading more store closures like this out of SF. This latest exodus won’t be the last.
But hey, this is what they’ve been voting for this whole time. I have to wonder which type of people are the ones who’ve been casting their ballots at every election cycle in SF. Is it the people on welfare who’ve been voting Democrat just to ensure a steady stream of welfare benefits? Is it the unemployed?
The criminal Democrat mafia using voter fraud and rigged voting machines is probably a big factor?
I’ve been a Vagabond going in and out of The City since the mid nineties. I avoid it as much as possible these days. I’ve helped a lot of people and spent a lot of money there. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze anymore though. I can’t imagine living there and paying taxes. I’d be stocking up on pitchforks, tar and feathers if I were.
to bad your comment is unresearched. The home owners of SF carry the tax burden. The elected voters preach fairness and then mis-manage the funds. SF politicians have made SF a sanctuary city offering its services to the disenfranchised while the home owners are the ones becoming the disenfranchised. SF home owners are being held hostage while politicians control access from commerce with their frivolous spending and lack of access to areas of commerce away from the major residental areas of the city. The controling politicians ineptitude have caused the local downturn in commerce and over burdened services. It won’t stop until SF is a wasteland.
No. It’s liberals who believe in the policies of self-sacrifice for the “public good,” convinced that abasement and public shame and altruism define virtue. They bring those beliefs to the workplace, where they disregard business practices in order to satisfy diversity, inclusion, and tolerance for rape, violence, and drug addiction – as long as the perpetrators are ppl of color, illegals, or disadvantaged. This mental illness drives their voting policies+the results are predictable.
I live in Oakland and used to love going to SF Centre and Union Square. No more. I’ll only shop in Walnut Creek these days where it’s clean, people are civilized and there’s plenty of security.
I agree with you was robbed twice and one of the robberies 90 000 of jewelry
I agree. Walnut Creek is nice and too far for the crooks in SF and Oakland to drive to.
It was vagrants first, before crime ruined out downtown retail.
No one wanted to go downtown because they got targeted by vagrants, had to step over vagrants, vagrants peed in the planter boxes making everything smell terrible, vagrants dropped trousers and defecated in public. and took over all the street benches with their stolen shopping carts and stacked up belongings.
Why did downtown retail shopping soon become online shopping? Because vagrants chased out the shoppers first. Now to be stuck dealing with porch pirates stealing online shopping deliveries so that is not working either. Feeding daily drug habits by theft and aggressive hand-handling is the common denominator.
Online shopping did not destroy downtown retail – vagrants forced shoppers to go online to avoid the unsavory hassles.
“But the baseline through every closure so far this decade has been one either stated or heavily hinted thing: crime. Break-ins, shoplifting, flash mob robberies, and so much more have caused small retailers and big retailers like Walgreens and Target to leave for years.”
In Singapore every perpetrator of such crimes would be in jail.
San Franciscans with cars who are smart, cross the Golden Gate to shop and recreate. Clean, green, safe and your people for multigenerational San Franciscans.
No doubt Democrat Mayor London Breed and the criminal Democrat mafia on the Board of Supervisors will try to blame Trump for the destruction of the once great city of San Francisco instead of their radical far left demonic agenda?
No sympathy for the idiots in SF who voted for “D” student incompetent morons too run their city! You get what you vote for, dumbass.
I totally agree. The Democrats with their liberal policies have destroyed California. The problem now is, even with a Reagan-esque type Conservative, I doubt California could ever begin solving it many problems. Like you said, the people of California voted for this, and they got it!
We need a new mayor with the ability to run a big city! She keeps saying…. It’s hard, it’s hard. We need a leader who’s not afraid to make decisions!! No, she will never be Governor Of California!!
Sure she will. And you will vote for her. Look what you did with Newsom. He’s destroyed the economy of the state, but hey – it’s hard.
Enabling is rife in San Francisco. It is destroying the downtown as vagrants and criminals are far more a priority than the general public. Despite the fact that the general public can pump more money into the area. And if a vagrant attacked a shopper and the shopper defended herself/himself with a gun or a knife, killing the vagrant, you know the shopper would be prosecuted.
It is a shame that a city that had so much beauty has allowed itself to become a shithole. Having ultra leftist politicians has enabled crime and poor behavior choices and put decent citizens in danger downtown.
San Francisco taught me to hate the homeless with a passion. I never give vagrants any money and never donate to any organization that reaches out to help the homeless. San Francisco has demonstrated what happens when the homeless are babied like that.
I grieve for San Francisco – the city of my birth; its richness, history, its beauty and even its bawdy districts and habits. But, it has been turned ugly, uninviting, a laughing stock, at the hands of its own citizens gone mad for the notion that there is no price to pay for adopting lawlessness and Fentanyl in place of Jack LaLanne, Herb Caen, Pauline Phillips or even Sister Mary Boom Boom – Nun of the Above. Maybe she stayed too long at the party.
I’m from Ohio and visited there a couple months ago. Signs were every where, even in remote parks, warning people about “smash and grab” crimes. We were warned about the high crime BEFORE we even left the airport.
But that doesn’t really show the sad state Cali is in. Before I left I was in a line of people and overheard a conversation between 4 native SF’ers. They spoke of how bad the crime was, but they actually said “it’s bad, but at least we are in California.” I almost laughed out loud, but as I thought about it, I felt sorry for them because they so clueless. 99% of America is not as nasty, and crime ridden as so many cities in Cali are. The arrogance and cluelessness of those people is astounding and they’ll vote for their own destruction again and again.
This breaks my heart. I grew up in San Francisco in the Haight-Ashbury, in the 60’s. Going to the Emporium at Christmas to see Santa was just like in a Christmas Story movie. I’m glad I grew up in San Francisco when it was the best place to be.
The closure of L’Occitane, Sephora, and The North Face stores in San Francisco reflects the significant challenges faced by retailers in the area. This trend highlights the broader issues of rising crime rates, changing consumer habits, and the appeal of online shopping. It’s a concerning shift for a city once considered a retail hub, raising questions about its future commercial landscape.