As retailers move out of San Francisco, new ideas for unconventional tenants at this mall are flooding in.
DeRose said it doesn’t help that San Francisco is lacking in examples of these building transformations. The closest model is arguably Life Time, a fitness company that builds luxury athletic facilities across the U.S. and Canada. It’s about to open its first Bay Area club in nearby Walnut Creek, replacing a Macy’s. The major difference? Life Time tore the Macy’s down. Most of the properties it operates were new construction, or gut renovations of existing buildings.
If not recreation spaces, other replacements for retailers include food halls and, perhaps for shorter-term stints, animal shelters.opened in the Westfield Valley Fair mall in San Jose in 2022. That Eataly takes up 45,000 square feet of space across three floors; for comparison’s sake, the Nordstrom in the San Francisco Centre spans 312,000 square feet across five floors. A food hall would have to figure out how to attract consistent foot traffic, but as proven by the sometimes out-the-door lines at downtown San Francisco’s Chipotle, there is a customer base of hungry lunch perusers to be had.
On the animal shelter front, the Westfield Annapolis mall got an unconventional tenant in 2020 when the local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals opened up a shelter in its space. While San Francisco Animal Care & Control has created satellite outposts of its shelters in the past at places like Pet Food Express, executive director Virginia Donohue told SFGATE they don’t have the resources to maintain and staff such a space.
If it all sounds a bit pie-in-the-sky still, that’s because it is. Nothing about what will replace downtown retailers is set in stone yet. What’s clear is, and eventually, someone will have to take the leap of faith and jump in. Don’t be surprised if the new tenants are nothing like the old ones.
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