Cinemark to leave San Francisco Centre after Westfield departure
(KRON) — Another business has announced it will be leaving San Francisco Centre after Westfield’s decision to pull out of operating the biggest mall in the city.
The Century San Francisco Centre 9 and XD theater will be closing permanently after its current lease with the mall ends, the theater’s owner Cinemark, confirmed to KRON4. Cinemark says its decision came after a “comprehensive review” of local business conditions.
Cinemark is the first company to announce it will be departing the mall space since Westfield’s announcement to transfer the management of the shopping center to its lender. Now, the city waits to see if more of the businesses based at the mall will choose to leave too.
Shoppers walk by a Nordstrom sign at Westfield San Francisco Centre (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Nordstrom announced in May that the company would not renew its lease due to “unsafe conditions” in the city, city Supervisor Matt Dorsey said. Westfield said sales at San Francisco Centre dropped from $455 million in 2019 to $298 million in 2022.
San Francisco has faced challenging economic conditions since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. As more workers have remained remote, businesses in downtown San Francisco are faced with high operating costs and limited foot traffic to bring in consumers.
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Businesses aren’t the only ones struggling with the lack of people heading into the city on a regular basis. Bay Area Rapid Transportation has also seen significant declines in ridership since 2020, and the agency is still trying to get those numbers back up. This week, a reverse boycott at the Oakland A’s game brought the second-highest number of riders since before the pandemic.
Source: KRON4
