A nationwide crime wave is forcing many retailers, large and small, to close their doors or lock up their merchandise.
One example is Nordstrom, which made an announcement in May that it’s closing its flagship store in downtown San Francisco after 35 years in business.
The location inside Westfield Mall said goodbye to its last customers on Aug. 27, after opening in October 1988.
The store at the corner of Fifth and Market Streets once occupied five floors and spanned more than 312,000 square feet but is now closing like many other retailers because of a surge in crime and poor sales.
San Francisco Centre has suffered from a rise in shoplifting, homelessness, and public drug use.
A Popular 35-Year Store Location Closes Its Doors
A former shopping staple in downtown San Francisco, the neighborhood’s “unsafe conditions for customers, retailers and employees,” made operations difficult to sustain, a member of the city’s Board of Supervisors, Matt Dorsey, posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The now-empty Nordstrom location has been described by local media outlets as desolated with countless empty displays and mannequins packaged away.
Other major retailers in the area, including Old Navy Whole Foods, AT&T, Anthropologie, AmazonGo, Office Depot, and Saks Off Fifth Avenue, closed earlier this summer.
Remaining stores have been forced to lock up their stock to deter shoplifters.
Nordstrom Rack, across the street from the flagship location, shut down operations in June.
Even the Westfield Mall announced in June that it would be closing, after operating on Market Street for more than 20 years, local TV news station KRON4 reported.
The future viability of the San Francisco Centre shopping district is uncertain.
In mid-August, the owner of one of the area’s oldest major retailers, Gump’s, called out local politicians for failing to act to address widespread homelessness and shoplifting. Gump’s owner John Chachas warned California politicians in an ad in the San Francisco Chronicle that he may be forced to close the store after it first opened in 1861. His ad was addressed to California Gov. Gavin Newsom and San Francisco Mayor London Breed, accusing them of dereliction of duty, caused by the collapse of law and order.”
Today, as we prepare for our 166th holiday season at 250 Post Street, we fear this may be our last because of the profound erosion of this city’s conditions,” Mr. Chachas wrote. “San Francisco now suffers from a ‘tyranny of the minority’—behavior and actions of the few that jeopardize the livelihood of the many.”
By Bryan Jung
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