‘San Francisco changed dramatically’ – Nordstrom is bailing on a flagship store

> the latest retailer to capitulate to rising crime and lower foot traffic.

Nordstrom also bailed on the entirety of the Canadian market. Was that also due to crime in SF?

It's difficult to communicate and explain the enormous secular and systemic rippling shifts in economic conditions that have followed the pandemic and the shift to work from home, particularly and extraordinarily pronounced in SF for various reasons much more so than other places in the world.

A much easier story to solely blame localized crime. It is doubtful this is the real cause.

Malls have been on the decline for decades. The two malls closest to me put a "no unattended minors" policy in place. When I was a teenager, you just...went to the mall. Mall management is choking off a huge source of foot traffic to avoid the hassle of telling kids to stop fucking around.

The closest mall to me has lost two of its anchor stores. One of the malls near my old apartment in Chicago had a theater, an axe throwing venue...and some offices to fill some of the dozens of vacant retail locations. It's been in a downward spiral for years. Loss of visitors has led to more loss of visitors, shoplifting aside.

And what happens when the "legitimate" foot traffic goes away? The shops are empty. Not just from shoppers, but from staff. I wanted to buy a dress shirt a couple weeks ago at my local Macy's. I walked around the floor for nearly 15 minutes and couldn't find a single employee. There was one at a single checkout in a back corner. And so why is it a surprise that when shoppers disappear, staff is cut, and the shoplifting rate goes up? It seems obvious to me.

These big stores should have fewer locations that are smaller and more well-maintained. Spread themselves less thin and whole-ass the stores that they can actually afford to staff and secure.

Seems luxury retail is dying more so to cheaper competition from fast-fashion such as Zara, to individualized fashion online from Etsy, to hypebeast brands that seems to target younger demographics, to rising commercial real-estate rents and failure of shopping malls, to competition from delivery services, an an aging target audience (I don't know any millennials or younger who shop at Nordstrom). Retail theft is a drop in the bucket of their cash flow.

Even the article mentions that "San Francisco has been in the midst of what some call a doom spiral, with office buildings and businesses still empty in the post-pandemic landscape." If you're working from home, no reason to make the commute to stop downtown at retailers. The major downtown retailers thrived in the pre-WWII age when people lived close to urban centers, white flight and suburbanization killed the department stores which were the Amazons of their age, in recent decades, this trend has been reversing as people moved into cities, but after the pandemic, if you get to work from home, there's not much to bring you into the city, especially in places like SF with skyrocketing housing prices.

Their stock is down 33 percent over the past month and 75% over the past 5 years and this location is in a shopping mall - not exactly something that's been performing well. Therefore clearly store closures that were announced in may are entirely because of issues with the location? It's obviously a factor in the decision but I don't think it's a good idea to take a corporate executive's stated reason for shutting down stores/factories/etc as gospel. Remember a few months ago layoffs were happening almost like it was a fad? Once people started laying folks off it provided cover for everyone else? Interesting how all the retailers also announced their closures all at once.

While malls are declining nationwide, you can't deny the general safety of the area around this specific Nordstrom is an issue.

When I walked out of the rear entrance of Nordstrom towards Mission St, I immediately smelled urine and saw five homeless person laying on the ground, Nobody else was on the street.

I used to walk around this area everyday to go to work before the pandemic. It was a busy area with a lot of tech workers, tourists, and conference attendees. It's not the same anymore.

Why would any company operate a store in San Francisco when there are no deterrents to shoplifting and the criminals aren't even prosecuted? Additionally, this is not isolated to San Francisco as Oakland and Los Angeles are just as bad if not worse. California reaps what it sows.

‘The dynamics of the downtown San Francisco market have changed dramatically’: Nordstrom is bailing on a flagship store that’s 35 years old : https://archive.is/ozsZh

This situation is a perfect storm of:

   * Even post-covid it appears they are getting less customers coming in and buying stuff.

   * Due to deteriorating economic conditions more young people are willing to loot the store(s) than in the past. Almost like it's some form of revenge against the current system.

   * California, by vote, has softened their position on looting and shoplifting.

We can pretend to be sad about it, but we have all collectively "voted" in many ways to end many forms of retail shopping. You can blame it on local SF politics, but really SF is just 5-10 years ahead of other metro areas. Often what happens in California's largest cities spreads to the rest of the country over time. This means both good and bad trends.

I am not going to apply morality or a political slant to it, but we should evaluate what we want our cities to be like. If city living means high prices, high rate of property crimes and hollowed out empty commercial real estate, who would want to live there?

That place lost a dramatic amount of foot traffic. But all these things have been a long time coming. Many big employers were already moving out of SF when the pandemic hit. PG&E and Bank of America were already out. Citi and McKesson are both going. And all the tech companies, of course. SF is a pretty parochial city and has attempted to keep local homeowner taxes as low as possible by extracting it from employers through payroll and gross revenue taxes. But ultimately the city as it was financially shaped was only possible through the employers.

Unfortunately, SF locals do not see the link between things like a gross receipts tax and Friends of the Urban Forest losing funding so we're here.

But I think it's overall a good thing. I'm not pro-austerity: we should spend on things. But now SF will be forced to spend on things that return.

Looks like the company is trying to cash out and just looking for excuses, months ago they liquidated all their assets in Canada, even stores’ shelves and furniture were on sale.

Which is worse? Chicago's dramatic change or San Francisco's dramatic change?

Another store lying about "crime" being the reason they're closing.

This is what happens when you let tech billionaires into your city. Best to exile them to the suburbs.

I fail to understand how this is different from organized rings of train robbers in the old, old west. Maybe we need modern day cowboys now (per my recollection, cowboys played both sides of the law)? Most likely we'll have security drones, like Boston Dynamics's robot dog.

Edit to say that having people hounded by security drones sounds like a terrible state of affairs. Having businesses robbed by organized gangs does as well. I think UBI and rent control or rent subsidies with high taxes on the wealthiest is a better solution in the short-term. For the long-term, philosophies that advocate for less materialism seem preferable (no need to rob if you're happy with less money etc.).