Westfield Gives Up Downtown San Francisco Mall | Hacker News Reader

Westfield Gives Up Downtown San Francisco Mall

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114 pointsg42gregory73 comments

Valley Fair in San Jose, which is also owned by Westfield, reports revenues at pre-pandemic levels. https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/03/21/san-jose-westfield-va...

It's also a much better mall tbh

In a nicer, significantly safer area.

Valley Fair and Santana Row across the street are pretty much always busy.

Sometimes it's surprising to me because both, and especially VF since they expanded again recently, are much higher end and I would think not as affordable to the average family but maybe I'm wrong.

There aren't many places for people to just walk around and browse with air conditioning. Many malls are 80% outdoor parking lot

That particular mall is also probably the nicest one around the area. Actually decent dining options (not just food court food), some public space to hangout / people watch etc and a good selection of high end and lower end brands.

I'm not a big mall person, and I hate shopping for clothing, but I do find malls in many Asian countries pretty interesting. Bangkok comes to mind, with food stalls, indoor "markets", floors of dining options available.

It’s a great place to pick up a new LV purse then wait 3 hours for some udon and top it off with a $70 pizza

The lines at marugamu and nagi are insane!

So is the wait time at Din Tai Fung!

Spot on. Quite the, um.... experience.

The udon is great for what it is but not worth that kind of wait; however, you may be interested to know Marugame recently opened a location up the street in Cupertino and so far at least it hasn't been nearly as busy, at least on weekdays.

This may be a vast misinterpretation on my part, but I read the comment as a way to point out the absurdity, not highlight the quality of any of the three. I think a 3-hour wait is exaggerated, but I agree this quality of udon is definitely not something you should have to wait this long for. Not sure what $70 pizza refers to, but it's very believable you might pay that amount for a pizza. All after buying a new LV purse.

Heh, that's fair. I read it as being something OP would be interested in getting if not for the hassle.

FWIW here in the southbay it's already pretty easy to blow $30-40 on an average, not even amazing, large pizza.

I wonder what anyone coming from other parts of the world thinks when they just arrive. How long does it take until they accept as normal this cost of living with respect to received mediocrity? Don't forget to tip that 20%! Other quality-of-life concerns aside like good weather, good tech opportunities abound, etc., from a food-pricing POV, it must seem like a bad deal to an outsider just coming in, or maybe they already know what they're signing up for when they decide to move and it's no big deal.

And it's not like the waiters make significantly more. No, the majority of costs is the friggin' rent of the establishment.

The $70 pizzas are at Eataly

> which is also owned by Westfield

I thought westfield were selling all their US malls

They are but it's currently owned by Westfield and in theory subject to the same management strategies as SF mall.

Yes, presumably no one wanted this one.

https://www.foxla.com/news/all-westfield-malls-in-us-to-be-s...

Selling vs giving up.

This should give all those SF apologists something to think about. There are always excuses for the deteriorating conditions. Either it’s not as bad as everyone claims to be. Or it’s bad, but pandemic is to blame. If either of those things were true, why would SF lag so much when San Jose didn’t? Unless the city was mishandling everything.

I am no SF apologist but if you read through the article:

"Over the past three years, Westfield has sold a number of properties, including the Westfield Brandon in Tampa, the Westfield North County in San Diego and the Westfield Santa Anita in Arcadia."

SF leadership is problematic but it's not clearcut to me that Westfield closure is just an SF city problem.

San Diego was never an international city, neither are the others.

People useeto fly in here from all over the world to visit the city, see a concert, or do some business followed by a bit of shopping. Those tourists are largely gone and conventions are increasingly moving elsewhere because of concerns over safety and property crime.

More to the point, San Franciscomore so than any other city is a stand in for the US for most of APAC because that's were most of the Asians are and where most international flights from Asia most often terminate. When San Francisco becomes a joke, democratic governance itself becomes a joke.

Sometimes you need a living example to set the boundaries on extremes. SF went extreme in a certain way that was becoming more popular, and likely the tide will come in now.

My sense is that surviving and thriving malls in urban areas today are really destination experiences for dining. Valley Fair has extremely high-quality dining options which brings the foot traffic that props up the whole enterprise. The SF Westfield never felt like they cracked that. It's only been open since '88 so it was sort of a latecomer to the mall era and got stuck in the department store, shopping-as-destination model. It required a detour down from Union Square's shopping district and didn't have much to do inside besides shopping, so I'm surprised it hung on this long.

If anyone ever wondered what the symptoms of urban blight were before NYC became the mess it was in the 1970s, SF is exhibit A. The city's leadership has driven out its anchor businesses, tax base, corporate travelers, and much more. Federal bailouts are SF's only hope.

I haven’t willingly gone to a mall in 20 years. Who goes there? Mall walkers? Are there still arcades?

Faster, please.

Malls in suburbs are extremely busy.

I'm about as pro urban as you get. I live two miles from downtown Portland. But I have noticed that a lot of urbanites pretend that malls are doomed. This is a lie. Suburban malls are clearly doing great while urban malls, including those in dense walkable areas are faltering. In fact, all downtown areas are faltering at least on the west coast .

Portland would have a great downtown if they got the unhoused population under control. The complete inaction of Portland's government to do anything substantial to actually fix this problem is what made Portland go from a very happening and up & coming city to a nightmare.

As an Oregonian living now just outside of Portland (near Nike FWIW) I'm hoping for the day Multnomah and Portland get their act together. Such a great area to live otherwise.

Kinda not surprised why Bend blew up in population though, once I realized what was going on

what do you mean "once I realized what was going on"?

> The decline of the American mall has left just 700 still standing. Soon there may be just 150 left.

https://www.businessinsider.com/american-mall-decline-150-le...

In the winter the Mall of America is a big deal for me and my kids. Big nice space to walk in.

Suburbinites still drive. Have to drive, to go anywhere. The WFH movement is a cancer to urban areas. Always crawling over brown boxes I am.

There's a lot in between. I live in a suburb but am also a block from a grocery store, coffee shop, pastry shop, pizzeria, brewery.....

Situation seems to be a lot different in Australia. All malls, especially those in the CBDs, are completely packed all the time. Though iirc, Australia has far fewer malls per capita. So perhaps the US simply built too many malls and is now correcting to something sane.

Westfield SF is not like the failing / dated suburban malls most people think of. It's extremely nice. High end stores. Beautiful architecture. And it's right on Market Street in downtown San Francisco. There's a food emporium on the lower floor, with high quality restaurants, not your typical food court faire. Nationwide there's a trend for dated 80s malls to close, but high end malls like Westfield? They're thriving elsewhere.

> They're thriving elsewhere.

I'm not so sure, based on my anecdata:

In my Midwest city, out of 8 traditional malls I can think of...

- 3 have totally closed and are being torn down

- 4 are drastically lower quality, lost their anchors, and have much lower traffic

- 1 is still doing about as well as it did 30 years ago.

Where in the Midwest?

In the entire IL-WI-IN region the only high end mall I can think of that is even remotely comparable to Valley Fair or Santana Row in San Jose is Oakbrook Center by McD's HQ, but that still feels a bit trashy compared to some of the ones in California (no offense meant at Chicagoland btw)

The upscale malls here in California have pivoted to cater to Asian and Latino tastes and sentiments - both are communities which are fine with Malls as a social construct. The kinds of upscale malls here like the Westfield in La Jolla and San Jose or Santana Row are definetly catering to someone who has experienced malls in Asia and Latin America, where it is a much more upscale experience.

The types that cater to Western sentiments seem to be dying though in the Bay Area (eg. Westfield SF didn't pivot unlike Stonestown Galleria and is now dying).

Yeah, but NYC came back and so will SF. Detroit likely didn’t make a return because of its undesirable climate, but I’m hard-pressed to see a future where SF isn’t relevant in 50 years.

Detroit and NYC have similar climates. Detroit is a little drier and a little colder. But they both have freezing winters, hot summers... The climate has nothing to do with their lack of a comeback.

The difference lies largely in public transit. NYC had strong transit bones despite a few decades of wayward highway prioritization. Transit enables higher urban densities which (can) carry more revenue per square foot.

The difference is the time period and the industries they were built around. NYC was the center of the banking universe, but banking didn’t become big the way we know it today until the 80s, which did a lot to pull NYC out of its rut. Detroit was built around manufacturing and automobiles, and American businesses have done everything they can to make eviscerate domestic manufacturing in their pursuit of profits.

I always thought it was lack of universities in Detroit. Henry Ford hated cities, “elites”, etc which is you don’t see a major Ford University in Detroit. There was no Leland Stanford or James Duke in Detroit. So no CMU, Case Western, etc. [1]

NYC has a few great universities which means it has a pipeline of students for high information/innovation business employees. Same with the Bay Area. Chicago, LA too. Detroit doesn’t really have any world class universities.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/07/could-a...

Detroit has UMich, where Larry Page of Google fame is an alum of (Ann Arbor is commuting distance from Detroit).

Also, all the conversations about Detroit vs NYC seem to forget the Riots of 1967.

> The riot resulted in 43 deaths, 1,189 injured, over 7,200 arrests, and more than 400 buildings destroyed

Entire neighborhoods were razed in the aftermath of that and White-Black relations deteriorated severely leading to an extreme amount of white flight.

If you visit Michigan, suburbs located outside of Wayne County like Dearborn, Ann Arbor, Troy, Hamtrack, and Windsor ON continue to have a vibrant economy, but Detroit (Wayne County) is economically dead.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Detroit_riot

What economy would you propose for a downtown core of tall office buildings in an American city post-pandemic and post-remote-work?

https://www.nber.org/digest/jan03/what-reduced-crime-new-yor...

> The contribution of such deterrence measures (the "stick") offers more explanation for the decline in New York City crime than the improvement in the economy, the authors conclude. Between 1990 and 1999, homicide dropped 73 percent, burglary 66 percent, assault 40 percent, robbery 67 percent, and vehicle hoists 73 percent. The authors' model manages to explain between 33 and 86 percent of those declines

NYC was founded as and continues to be a financial capital, its where deals are done, so that strong anchor among its overall diversified economy helped. SF is somewhat similar to Detroit in that their economies are less diversified but weather and geography is a major advantage.

NYC came back because the mayor imposed some draconian laws - laws that would not be palatable in San Francisco.

Or perhaps because of the finance industry boom of the 80s onwards?

Research supports the draconian narrative.

> The contribution of such deterrence measures (the "stick") offers more explanation for the decline in New York City crime than the improvement in the economy, the authors conclude.

https://www.nber.org/digest/jan03/what-reduced-crime-new-yor...

Detroit never came back to what it was, but it became something different and in many ways it's better than it was at any other time in the last 50 years.

> Federal bailouts are SF's only hope.

Wouldn't that just enable more of the policies that led to this?

And why would it need to be federal? This sounds more like a California problem from across the country.

Only the Feds have the money/ability to borrow. Newsom spent CA’s surplus.

Yes, it would enable more policies like this. For those involved in promulgating such policies, that is the whole point.

But even assuming they changed policy, I doubt SF can maintain basic govt operations without a bailout.

Peep shows and pawn shops for downtown SF?

There are a number of amazing channels on youtube who have been documenting the rising “Dead/Dying Mall” trend over the past couple of decades…

- Dan Bell

- Sal

- Ace’s Adventures

- Retail Archeology

- Bright Sun Films

… are just a few of them. Dying malls has obviously been a trend across the country, but I’m cautiously predicting that this will change as more people crave interaction with actual humans and as more people get tired of being misled about the products they’re purchasing online.

Anecdotal, but it seems like most people whom Ive happened into the subject with have had worse and worse experiences purchasing online over the past couple years—everything from colors not matching the photos, to fitting wrong, to cheap construction, to not living up to what they expected, and on and on and on.

I’ve also noticed more people saying they wish they could just have the item in their hand immediately to get that immediate satisfaction/closure.

All anecdotal of course, but it feels like we may move back in that direction, at least a little.

Until then, there is definitely no shortage of content for the dozens of “dead mall” channels.

Does online-purchase-bad => the-rise-of-malls?

Personally, malls are still the last brick and mortar place I would go to shop.

I think you have a point but part of this was self-inflicted. Instead of knowledgeable salespersons who could help with the purchase, the stores tried to cut costs and replace them with lower cost people who did not know/care as much. If they reverse this trend I think the malls can come back.

Most of what malls around here have are clothes, just a few tiny shops and a supermarket (food, etc.). Considering there's not much choice in elecroics etc. in the first place, and most of the stuff is just clothes, I don't really care about the salespeople, I just wan't the shirt and shoes, pants, etc. to fit. A large t-shirt in C&A fits me perfectly, but in Primark the XL model is too short, and I need an XXL slim size. If i buy nike sneakers, I sometimes need one or even two numbers larger shoe than with other brands (adidas, reebok,...).

Buying online has been a pain and in case of cheaper stuff, a waste of money, since returning a 9eur shirt meant driving to the post office, packing it up, paying postage to return and wait for a couple of weeks to get 9eur back after spending 10eur to ship stuff back.

Was recently in Bangkok where they have enormous 6 or even 9 story malls completely full of stores. Step outside and walk a block and there's another one. It was mind blowing.

What I noticed was just how useful these malls were, they had multiple bank branches, a grocery store, electronic stores, tons of food options and sometimes even a fitness center. I could certainly see why someone may want to go multiple times per week. Contrast that with the average US mall where you might have half a dozen or more jewelry stores and a ton of clothing stores. My old home mall had a handful of places to eat and couldn't even keep a coffee shop for multiple years (also a Westfield property). A rather useless place. Seems our mall owners just optimized for $ per square foot and called it a day.

The main link missing here is the need to drive to the mall in America. You just can’t support as many people and as many shops because you need more parking square footage than the size of the mall to accommodate the cars.

Without the density the economics of most malls don’t make sense. Well that and we built too many anyway.

Same experience in Colombia (3 different malls, 2 different cities).

And like someone said below, much less space wasted on parking (more buildings, less actual parking since taxis are so cheap)

Australia all but copied mall culture, Westfield are the most popular malls here as well and they follow the same pattern as the US malls.

They have never been busier as best I can tell, and during the pandemic they ended up packed as people became more comfortable with the rules and risks, I think for the reason you mentioned, social interaction and just getting out.

That said, you need a strong middle-class to afford the mall, and I think on top of some malls just being too ambitiously placed in the middle of nowhere, a lack of customers who can afford to shop likely drove people away and into eCommerce.

https://youtu.be/586SO9-wWoA

Adam Something explores why European Malls are doing ok and American Malls are dying.

Online shopping gets pointed at most often as a cause-of-death of malls, but another big factor is the rise of mega-supermarkets. Why make an extra stop at Macy's when you can get the same meh-quality pillowcases and khakis on your weekly Kroger trip?

Times change quickly. It was less than ten years ago that the second wing of the mall was completely renovated, with a food court that was an eclectic and upscale delight. Now it’s destined to become yet another dead and haunted mall.

Closer to 15 years at this point, but your point still stands.

Two large hotels in the downtown area recently stopped making mortgage payments. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/two-s-f-s-largest-hot...

Full article: https://www.wsj.com/articles/hotel-owners-start-to-write-off...

Typical sna Francisco story. Property owner says it’s the crime and deterioration of public city. The city says it’s actually not their fault. San Francisco defenders say it’s actually just economics and nothing is truly wrong with their city.

I assume it has to do with the crime rate, including violation of bylaws by homeless, like loitering in the elevators per some security guards of the mall? If so, I have to ask: what do the politicians stand to gain by refusing to enforce the law? Why did they instead resort to attacking any criticism by using the magic R word?

we live 20mins away from Westfield mall but my wife and I rather drive down south to Serramonte or even Hillsdale mall (30mins+ drive). my wife doesn't want to deal with certain characters in SF downtown and i don't blame her a bit. i have seen my fair share of broken windows and general craziness in SF. i mean who wants to see a butt naked guy while shopping for a pair of jeans? pre-pandemic my colleague had the bad fortune of seeing someone taking a dump right outside Bart station.

This was covered by a different "news" patient that put the blame is squarely and solely on the cost of living being so high that regular folks cannot afford to live in San Francisco.

I think the person interviewed in the article got it more right (heh):

' "This place is somewhere to get away from what's happening on the streets."'

I say good. Let the giant corporations leave. Let the office space crash. Let the tax base erode. San Francisco will come back harder. We need creatives, artists and people who work with their hands . The tech people would be lucky to be a minority with such a backdrop

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