Westfield’s announcement Monday that it would pull out of its namesake Downtown San Francisco mall is yet another blow to the city’s beleaguered Union Square shopping district.
May's announced closure of Nordstrom, the Westfield San Francisco Centre’s anchor department store, was perhaps the final straw, but the shopping center had been steadily losing smaller tenants since 2020.
An analysis by The Standard shows that 45 stores, or 46% of the mall’s 97 pre-pandemic retailers, have closed since 2020. While 21 new stores have opened in the past three years, the wave of closures left the shopping center with many vacant storefronts.
A similar exodus has taken place in the basement-level food court. Approximately 36 food and beverage sellers were operating inside the mall before the pandemic; only 20 eateries are still in business. Despite eight new cafes opening in the past three years, vacancies abound.
The Standard conducted an in-depth analysis of vacancies at street-level shops in and around Union Square last month. The findings were strikingly similar: 47% of pre-pandemic storefronts have shut down since 2020.
The tables below show the full list of retailers and eateries that have shut down, opened and remain open as of June 2023 in the Westfield mall.