By Kate King and Jim Carlton | The Wall Street Journal
SAN FRANCISCO—Artificial intelligence is powering a comeback across much of this hard-hit city. That recovery isn’t doing much to stop its biggest mall from imploding.
San Francisco Centre resembles a retail ghost town: 93% of its more than 1.5 million square feet sits vacant, according to commercial-real-estate data firm Trepp. The nine-level complex, once among the Bay Area’s top-performing malls, is now bleeding millions of dollars a year.
The mall’s shops and corridors are surprisingly clean. But years of homelessness, shoplifting and drug use in the mall and surrounding area have driven out nearly all its retailers since the start of the pandemic, giving shoppers little reason to go there today.
