Macy's SF Stonestown Mall location up for sale

SAN FRANCISCO (KTVU) - The landscape of malls nationwide may be dramatically changing now that Sears, Kmart and Macy's have all announced the closure of more than 200 of their stores combined.

In San Francisco, two Macy's stores are affected by the announcement.

Macy's is selling its store at the Stonestown Mall location on 19th Avenue in the city's Sunset District for $41 million. General Growth Properties or GGP, which operates Stonestown Mall, will be picking up the 280,000 square foot facility.

Macy's sold the Union Square Men's Store to Stanley Morgan for $250 million in November. That company has not said what it plans to do with the space.

Macy's issued a press release saying, "While we are pleased with the strong performance of our highly developed online business, we continue to experience declining traffic in our stores where the majority of our business is still transacted."

Carina Baird has been shopping at the Macy's in Stonestown for years. "I have four boys so I am here a lot and that'll be quite a trek to have to go elsewhere," she sighed. She and customers say they're disappointed that the Macys, with a suburban feel and plenty of parking, is one of 100 stores nationwide being shuttered.

"It's gonna be really weird not seeing it here," said Sharon Pan, who said her parents shop at the store frequently for bedding and clothes.

"I'm really surprised. I didn't know about it actually until now," said Mark Ohanesian, who works at nearby San Francisco State University. Other customers said while the department store offers great sales and plenty of coupons to lure customers back, it didn't seem to pack the same volume of patrons that other Macy's stores did.

Baird said she will miss the convenience of the Stonestown location. "Having to replace that with either a journey by Muni downtown and deal with the parking there or on the freeway to Serramonte is definitely not ideal."

GGP says it will lease the space back to Macys for the time being but will not say what it is doing long term until its quarterly earnings report on January 30th.

"We have redeveloped, and are currently redeveloping, over 100 former anchor and big box sites throughout our portfolio over the past 5 years," said Kevin Berry of GGP. "The Macy's at Stonestown represents a further opportunity for us to add value to the property."

"If i wanted to go to Macys I would probably have to go to Serramonte, um, but there is a Target opening so hopefully that makes up for some of the loss," smiled Pan.

That Target will replace the Sports Authority which went out of business over the summer.
Meanwhile Macys says will be laying off approximately 6200 of its workers nationwide, mostly store associate jobs.