San Francisco has been suffering from a steep decline in retail foot traffic around the city's Union Square shopping district ever since the covid pandemic.
With huge office towers still largely empty as thousands of high-tech workers continue to work from home, city streets have become more and more dangerous.
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In recent years, Walgreens (WBA) moved to close several stores in the area, citing rampant shoplifting. (City officials noted at the time that the company had a pre-existing plan to close 200 of its stores nationwide.)
Now a key tenant of the upscale Westfield Mall on San Francisco's Market Street has announced plans to close the store and a nearby outlet.
Nordstrom (JWN) told the San Francisco Standard it will leave the area this summer when its current leases expire.
Many Stores Have Left
The company told employees in an email that "the dynamics of the downtown San Francisco market have changed dramatically over the past several years, impacting customer foot traffic to our stores and our ability to operate successfully," the Standard reported.
Nearly two dozen retailers in the area have closed or announced plans to close since 2020, the report said.
San Francisco’s problems, like those of Chicago, have drawn gleeful political fire from the right, anxious to conclude that the cities’ issues are solely the fault of their Democratic leadership.
Elon Musk, whose newly acquired Twitter headquarters building is just blocks from the Nordstrom’s location, has made the same complaint. Particularly after a Whole Foods nearby abruptly closed after opening less than a year before.
"The planned closure of Nordstrom underscores the deteriorating situation in Downtown San Francisco," a spokesperson for the mall told The Standard.. "A growing number of retailers and businesses are leaving the area due to the unsafe conditions for customers, retailers, and employees, coupled with the fact that these significant issues are preventing an economic recovery of the area."
Nordstrom Has Other Problems
Nordstrom closed its other San Francisco location -- at a mall in the southwestern residential area of the city -- in 2019, before the pandemic.
Nordstrom has been struggling even without its latest problems in San Francisco. Earlier this year it gave up on efforts to establish itself in Canada. The company said it would close all of its 13 Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack stores in Canada.
The decision came at a steep price, costing the luxury department store chain $300 million to $350 million in pre-tax charges for the first quarter and a loss of $400 million in total revenue.
In 2020 Nordstrom closed a Sacramento-area store as part of plans to close 16 stores across the country hurt by the pandemic.
An SEC filing in March said Nordstrom has 94 Nordstrom stores and 241 Nordstrom Rack stores in the U.S.
