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Downtown San Francisco mall gets new name
San Franciscos downtown mall has undergone a name change. Once called the Westfield Centre, it is now the Emporium Centre San Francisco.
SAN FRANCISCO - San Francisco Centre, the downtown mall on Market Street that was once known as the Westfield Centre, is losing another store. This time, H&M confirms they are vacating the massively empty and floundering retail space.
What we know:
The fast-fashion retailer told KTVU in a statement that they will be closing their downtown mall location in January.
In their statement, they reminded that you can still shop other San Francisco and Bay Area locations, including a location that just opened last month.
"We remain committed to our presence in the San Francisco Area and will continue to explore opportunities for the best store locations — a guiding principle since our founding in 1947 — as reflected in our recent opening at Stonestown Galleria on November 20, 2025," the statement read.
They also mentioned you can continue to shop for their clothing line online.
The store said they will follow normal procedure and try to get employees from San Francisco Centre into available roles at neighboring stores.
Flailing mall
The San Francisco Centre, once flanked by anchor stores, Nordstrom and Bloomingdale's, has been in a slow decline after struggling to gain foot traffic in the aftermath of the pandemic.
This fall, the foreclosed 1.4 million square-foot mall headed to the auction block, after several delays, where it was reportedly sold to Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase for $134 million in November. The mall sold well below its former reported value.
The previous owners defaulted on the loan and stopped making mortgage payments in 2023.
In September, we reported the mall was 95% empty and continued to lose retailers and restaurants and its food court. The food court and mall itself feel abandoned and overall like an afterthought considering the mall's vast emptiness.
The directory shows only a handful of stores remain.
FOX Business reports the mall's Shake Shack is set to close Dec. 14, affecting 26 employees. They told the news outlet that the new owner is requiring all tenants to vacate the premises.
After Shake Shack's departure, it appears Panda Express will be the mall's sole restaurant remaining.
The mall's future
In a previous interview on KTVU, Alex Sagues, CBRE senior vice president, said the notion that online shopping has overtaken brick and mortar shopping isn't exactly true.
"Around 15% of all retail sales are online, leaving 85% in brick and mortar. It has certainly changed retail and we've seen that over the last 20 years as the landscape of retailers have shifted pretty dramatically," he said.
While many proposals have been talked about for the future of the mall, no solid plans have been revealed yet. Some have pondered if the space could be used for housing, but the cost of building housing may be a drawback. Sagues thought that would be an unlikely development and sees retail as the most likely investment for the future, although some office and housing could be mixed in with that plan.
While the mall continues to struggle, the area surrounding the mall is seeing a bit of a renaissance with new shops popping up, some through the city's Vacant to Vibrant revitalization program, but also stores that are looking to stick around for the long term, like the Union Square Nintendo store, which opened last spring.
Sagues had said these types of developments only help the city's economic outlook. He also said COVID didn't bring about all the problems in this retail corridor, but that in a sense it was the straw that broke the camel's back.
San Francisco Centre mall, 95% empty, loses more restaurants
Two more restaurants are closing their doors at the San Francisco Centre mall. It's yet another sign of the headwinds the mall faces.