The town’s largest mall, which had deliberate to close down on the finish of the weekend, was locked and darkish Saturday morning.
An indication posted on the entrance to San Francisco Centre stated the downtown buying hub was “closed till additional discover.”
An worker at Ecco, the mall’s final remaining tenant, confirmed that the shoe retailer – and the mall itself – had completely shuttered sooner than anticipated, forward of Monday’s beforehand introduced closure date.
The early shutdown marks the ultimate chapter for what was as soon as San Francisco’s largest and most distinguished shopping center, after years of vacancies and tenant departures hollowed out a downtown retail landmark.
San Francisco Centre had been within the strategy of winding down for months underneath its new house owners, a gaggle of lenders, which bought the mall’s debt in November. By this week, Ecco was the one remaining tenant in what was as soon as a bustling, multistory retail hub at Market and Fifth streets.
Earlier within the week, BART closed the doorway connecting Powell Avenue Station on to the mall, sealing off a passageway that for many years funneled commuters and customers into the buying middle. The closure fueled hypothesis on-line that the shutdown was imminent.
An indication posted on the entrance to San Francisco Centre on Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026, proclaims that the mall has closed. (Courtesy of Nicole Frugé )
The mall had initially introduced it will shut on the finish of enterprise Sunday, when Ecco was anticipated to close its doorways. As a substitute, the closure got here early, bringing a quicker-than-anticipated finish to the buying middle’s lengthy decline.
San Francisco Centre has struggled for years with falling foot site visitors, an issue exacerbated by the pandemic and the shift to distant work. The downturn in exercise across the Powell Avenue hall contributed to the departures of main anchor tenants Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s, accelerating what many retail consultants have described as a downward spiral.
Brokerage agency CBRE has been employed to market the property, although actual property consultants have cautioned that redeveloping the large, transit-linked complicated can be extraordinarily costly and technically difficult.
What occurs subsequent stays unsure. Metropolis officers and planners have floated concepts starting from housing and humanities venues to large-scale leisure makes use of, however any redevelopment of the large, transit-linked web site would seemingly take years and require vital funding.
Mall administration didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon the early closure.
This text initially printed at San Francisco’s largest mall unexpectedly closes forward of schedule.