America’s “most beautiful mall” is now 93% vacant. You can’t blame this one on Amazon.

Photo above - interior of the downtown San Francisco Centre mall. It's 93% vacant now, so either this is one of the legacy photos depicting how America used to be, or an AI created image.

What age is too young to die, if you’re a shopping mall? San Francisco Centre was built in 1988. It’s not dead yet – but only 7% alive (store occupancy). See link below.

If this was a 37 year old homeless migrant instead of a luxury shopping mall, San Francisco might be making a more serious effort to forestall death. Even if the patient's vitals showed the body was on life support, with minimal brain activity. With a mall, there is as much hate as love. Some people will say that malls killed main street. But since this mall is right smack downtown, then it’s probably only a threat to Amazon, right?

People are too afraid to go downtown, because of crime, homelessness, sidewalk defecation, drug dealing, tent cities, prostitution. Amazon did NOT cause those things to happen. They are the result of government policies on what kind of policing they will do, or won't.

Perhaps part of the Centre mall's problem is that it’s right on the transit route (Powell Street station). Easy arrival and departure for shoppers, but also possibly criminals. (“I dunno officer . . . he grabbed my purse, and flew down the escalator toward the trains. Some guy in a grey hoodie wearing Chuck Taylors. What do you mean security cam footage will be useless? Isn’t there anything you can do?”)

I think I could hold tightly enough onto my purse to stop that from happening. But I still don’t want to see people defecating in the street, or mobbing me for folding money handouts. Nobody asks for spare change now, and everybody is afraid to open their wallet or purse to help an addict who is obviously in distress.

How much did San Francisco Centre cost to build? About half a billion in 1988. Imagine being on the hook for THAT mortgage, and trying to meet your monthly payments with a 93% vacancy rate.

When you google “San Francisco Centre” you will also get served up details on the new Golden State Warriors San Francisco Chase Center. No relation to the mall. It opened in 2019. The Chase Center is about ¼ the size of the shopping mall, but cost 3 times as much ($1.4 billion). If someone tried to build the downtown SF shopping Centre today, we’ve had 170% “consumer price index inflation”, but probably A LOT more real estate inflation.

The mostly empty mall is currently worth about $250 million, and is in danger of being repo’d, and occupants evicted. I won’t suggest turning the 2 million square feet into affordable housing. If each apartment was 1,000 square feet, that could be as many as 2,000 new rental units. But nobody will do that, because there are 8,323 homeless people in San Francisco. (How do they know that? The city counts them exactly, like eggs, but doesn’t police them???)

Those 8,323 homeless people aren’t good candidates to become renters in an affordable 9 story apartment complex on the site of the Centre mall. And as the homeless and addicts continue to swarm the sidewalks outside, nobody else will ever think of living there either.

I’m just sayin’ . . .


Dem-run city's iconic mall teeters on collapse as 93% of stores vacant after crime-wave causes stores to flee | Daily Mail Online

San Francisco Centre - Wikipedia