Westfield Leaving SF’s Largest Mall

The once vibrant Westfield mall in downtown San Francisco is feeling more like a melancholic ghost town, as its owners, Westfield Group and Brookfield Properties, have decided to throw in the towel and bid adieu to Market Street and the 1.5 million square foot “San Francisco Centre”.

With dwindling foot traffic, plummeting sales, and a host of retailers abandoning ship, the “retail heart” of the city has taken quite a beating.

After two decades, it seems the challenging environment of downtown San Francisco was just too much and, they’ve stopped paying their hefty $558 million mortgage and left the keys with the lender. So that doesn’t necessarily mean that the mall will close down, but it doesn’t look promising.

In the meantime, it’s business as usual for the tenants that remain including H&M’s Summer Sale (up to 60% off) and TUMI’s Semi-Annual Sale with up to 30% off.

Nordstrom, a heavyweight tenant and star attraction, is making its exit, leaving the mall with a gaping hole and a meager 55% occupancy rate. Also hopping on the goodbye train is Banana Republic, adding to the center’s woes.

Plus Cinemark is calling it quits, announcing the closure of the mall’s movie theater which will shut down Friday, June 16th. Quite the dramatic turnaround for what used to be a bustling shopping hub.

But it’s not just San Francisco that Westfield is planning on abandoning. The Paris-based company hinted earlier this year that it was time for a “radical reduction of financial exposure” in the U.S., sparking speculation that a move like this was on the horizon. Their grand plan? To sell off most American malls and return to their European roots.

Read more at KRON4, SFGate and Business Insider