The shopping center company Westfield is transferring the ownership of its Westfield San Francisco Centre shopping mall to its lender, citing a sharp decline in sales and occupancy.
“For more than 20 years, Westfield has proudly and successfully operated San Francisco Centre, investing significantly over that time in the vitality of the property,” said the company in a statement published by SFGate.com. “Given the challenging operating conditions in downtown San Francisco, which have led to declines in sales, occupancy and foot traffic, we have made the difficult decision to begin the process to transfer management of the shopping center to our lender to allow them to appoint a receiver to operate the property going forward. San Francisco Centre’s debt is non-recourse and this action has no impact on the rest of [Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield’s] debt.”
Westfield and its partner, Brookfield Properties, ceased payments on the retail complex’s $558 million loan; the lender in this transaction was not publicly identified.
Reuters reported the mall’s foot traffic plummeted to 5.6 million visits last year from 9.7 million in pre-pandemic 2019 while sales sank to $298 million in December 2022 from $455 million in 2019. The mall’s occupancy shrank to 55% following the closure of the Nordstrom and Banana Republic stores at the property.
The mall operator’s decision is the second time in a week that the owners of major downtown San Francisco properties abandoned ownership. Last week, real estate investment trust Park Hotels & Resorts defaulted on the loan for two of its San Francisco hotels, which it released from its portfolio after citing concerns on the city’s “street conditions” and economy.
Photo by BrokenSphere / Wikimedia Commons
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San Francisco needs to clean up its act. Pure and simple.
Unfortunately, I will, Mayer she’s not in Clening Business
It is the homeless people, the drug users and the burglars that cause all the troubles. Just walk by market St and will see all the transients drug dealing on the street.
Are the words “street conditions” a polite euphemism for those living on the street?
You think?
Is not crypto collectivist, lefty utopianism a wonderful thing
More to come. The political class seems stuck in their Idealism.
Being a sanctuary city for the homeless just doesn’t pay the mortgage..
Get out of California – turn it over to t he homeless; statistically half of all America’s homeless population is there already. Invite the other half there and then the country can concentrate all of it resources from every state to housing them together. It’s not a place the middle class can survive- the state caters to the ultra rich and now the very poor.