Bay Area retail exodus continues as Old Navy becomes latest store to flea the area
Old Navy announced on Friday that it will close its flagship store in downtown San Francisco this summer, making the company the latest major retailer to abandon the crime-ridden city's central area this year., the store in Market Street will close on July 1 after almost three decades in business since it opened in 1999.
The company has denied that the reason for shutting down the store is in any way related to the recent rise in crime in downtown San Francisco, saying that Old Navy could better serve its customers elsewhere. Pedestrians walk by a boarded-up Old Navy store on May 15, 2020 in San Francisco, California. Malls and other businesses shutting down in an attempt to contain the coronavirus caused U.S. retail sales to fall by a record 16.4% from March to April in 2020.In a statement released on Friday, Gap said that the"difficult decision" to close the Market Street store was taken during a process to reevaluate its real-estate portfolio"to ensure a healthy fleet of stores.
While Gap has not said a rise in crime in downtown San Francisco is the motive behind its decision to close the Market Street store, other major retailers have specifically mentioned shoplifting and high inflation as the main reasons behind their stores' closures in the past few years. In May, online news website SFGATE reported that T-Mobile had closed its flagship store in San Francisco's Union Square a month before. In April,
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