Posted on 08/30/2023 9:56:15 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
A nationwide crime wave is forcing many retailers, large and small, to close their doors or lock up their merchandise.
One example is Nordstrom, which made an announcement in May that it's closing its flagship store in downtown San Francisco after 35 years in business.
The location inside Westfield Mall said goodbye to its last customers on Aug. 27, after opening in October 1988.
The store at the corner of Fifth and Market Streets once occupied five floors and spanned more than 312,000 square feet but is now closing like many other retailers because of a surge in crime and poor sales.
San Francisco Centre has suffered from a rise in shoplifting, homelessness, and public drug use.
A former shopping staple in downtown San Francisco, the neighborhood's “unsafe conditions for customers, retailers and employees,” made operations difficult to sustain, a member of the city's Board of Supervisors, Matt Dorsey, posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The now-empty Nordstrom location has been described by local media outlets as desolated with countless empty displays and mannequins packaged away.
Other major retailers in the area, including Old Navy Whole Foods, AT&T, Anthropologie, AmazonGo, Office Depot, and Saks Off Fifth Avenue, closed earlier this summer.
Remaining stores have been forced to lock up their stock to deter shoplifters.
Nordstrom Rack, across the street from the flagship location, shut down operations in June.
Even the Westfield Mall announced in June that it would be closing, after operating on Market Street for more than 20 years, local TV news station KRON4 reported.
The future viability of the San Francisco Centre shopping district is uncertain.
In addition to the rampant drug use, homelessness, and crime, the city has lost thousands to remote work after the COVID-19 pandemic, which has decimated vast areas of its commercial neighborhoods.
Office vacancies in San Francisco reached a record high of 31 percent in May, enough space for 92,000 workers, according to the Daily Mail.
The loss of office workers is expected to contribute to a budget shortfall of $1.3 billion in five years, while a decline in property tax revenue alone may cost nearly $200 million per year, according to the city's chief accountant.
Sales tax revenue for South of Market, or SoMA, where the stores were located, has seen a 25 percent decline from the first quarter of 2019.
Ms. Breed's office announced that it was working on changing laws and tax reforms that would bring more businesses to the area.
IKEA's opening of a new location at 945 Market Street on Aug. 23 was touted as a sign by Ms. Breed that things weren't too bad, calling IKEA's move "a game changer."
Mr. Dorsey said that the city will "have some serious issues to work on."
"San Francisco has always had ups and downs, but I'm going to tell you we always come back," he said. "And I'm not going to lose my optimism about my district or my city."
Last week, city authorities announced 17 new pop-up shops that will move into empty storefronts in the downtown Financial District in late September, according to ABC7 News in San Francisco.
Shoplifting has become a problem for retailers in major metropolitan regions nationwide, with even discount stores being hit.
On Aug. 24, Dollar Tree Chairman and CEO Rick Dreiling said the discount retailer would start locking up items to prevent growing theft.
Mr. Dreiling has blamed shrink, an industry term for stolen items and damages, for causing the company to miss its earnings forecasts and cut its outlook in May.
The retailer's gross profit margins tumbled to 29.8 percent in the second quarter of 2023 from 32.7 percent in the second quarter of 2022.
“We are now taking a very defensive approach to shrink,” Mr. Dreiling said, noting that inventory losses had “advanced a little further than what we had anticipated.”
The spree of store theft has already forced larger stores such as CVS and Target to lock up entire isles of items.
The CEO also suggested that some items with the highest rates of theft would be removed from stores altogether but wouldn't specify any in particular.
Representatives for Dollar Tree and Nordstrom didn't respond by press time to requests by the Epoch Times for comment.
It’s not a big secret or even a mystery: First big Blue City that does away with No Bail laws and no Arrest laws for property under $900.
will WIN their civilization back!!
Not all at once, but that will be how it must start.
Allegedly mastermined and supervised by the Carltels.
Diversity is our strength!
/s
Dollar Store affected.....
Due to Biden inflation the place may have to change its name if the famous hip hop star will allow his name to be used:
https://www.biography.com/musicians/50-cent
A few years ago his girl friend at the time had a falling out over his behavior. A writer said she took charge of the troubled relationship and “she sat her half dollar down and told him how it had to change.” Great writing.
Many retirement funds are getting raped, as they typically invest billions in city real estate, and are too sleepy to get activist about it. Predatory investors love sleepy investors because they react at turtle speed. Demonrat vulture investors will be happy to take the real estate they destroyed off granny’s hands. It’s an unscrupulous investing strategy that used to be called “block busting”, but is now full-on “city busting”.
Bookmark
How long before some leftard judge declares it to be a racist hate crime to close down a store because it deprivies black mobsters of places to “obtain” the same material goods as whites?
KEEP VOTING DEMOCRAT!! IT'S WORKING!!
(yes, I'm shouting because the idiots don't get it - ever)
Will a few, possibly, ever figure it out?
Thanks, auto-correct 🤣
Crime dropped like a rock.
Too many Americans don’t care anymore. If they did, they’d support cops using their batons to keep thugs at bay.
In the 1960s, Chicago’s Mayor Daly instructed his cops to “shoot looters.” Imagine that concept today?
Until politicians get mugged, or worse, nothing will change.
Office vacancies in San Francisco reached a record high of 31 percent in May, enough space for 92,000 workers,...
However, the daily participation rate of attendance in office has been by some 65% and companies will not renew their lease, which will exacerbate the problems
This is what happens when Marxists and their liberal stooges wreck a great city.
Just look around the country and tell me that this isn’t so.
Remember, Detroit was wrecked by it’s old Communist Party member Coleman Young and his bunch of MARXIST cohorts. New York and SF/LA, Portland and Seattle all have or had hardcore reds running their respective cities.
I have no idea why many more companies are not closing.
Leftists, like those in sf, are simply stupid people who vote for stupid things and then are so suprised when those stupid things come to pass.
A city in its death throes.
The LAST republican to serve in any position in San Francisco left office in 2014. He was on the board of BART.
https://www.kqed.org/news/11833540/james-fang-san-franciscos-last-elected-republican-dies-at-58
EC
I used to shop at the Nordstrom’s in Union Square. Is that the one? Cause FR has been posting that closing for about five years.
I used to love going to either SF or NYC at Christmas to see all the decorations and shows. Those days are over now.Maybe I’ll go see the boat parade in FL this year.
Sales taxes & Payroll taxes/jobs suffer the most.
I predict that IKEA doesn’t last 5 years there.
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