San Francisco, CA
How a Downtown San Francisco Mall Became a Shadow of Itself
The pictures are enough to make a shopper wince and a store owner cry.
San Francisco Centre’s new operators say they are committed to bringing back the half-empty mall, once the pride of Downtown, now a source of civic embarrassment and shame. But new data from location analytics company Unacast shows how foot traffic around the complex has fallen off a cliff.
The company uses GPS data gleaned from smartphones and mobile apps to estimate the number of people in a given area. In December 2019, the estimated number of visitors to the mall that month was at 668,000, boosted by the holiday shopping season. In December 2023, the mall only drew 265,000 visitors, a decline of more than 60%.
The data around the mall tells one story. Photos of the mall before and after the recent falloff in business tell another. Both present portraits of a business district in crisis, with the one-time landmark of San Francisco shopping now a shadow of its formerly vibrant self.