Originally published in 2007; expanded and updated in 2026.
When San Francisco Centre opened on October 7, 1988, it represented far more than a new shopping mall.
Built beside the historic Emporium building on Market Street, the project sought to reinvent downtown shopping for a new era. City leaders wanted to strengthen downtown retail. Developers envisioned a modern urban shopping destination. And San Francisco embraced a type of shopping center rarely seen in the region: a multi-level enclosed mall rising vertically through the heart of downtown.
Over the next four decades, San Francisco Centre would be reinvented repeatedly. The closure of The Emporium, the arrival of Westfield, the restoration of the historic dome, and the addition of Bloomingdale's each reflected new attempts to reshape downtown retail.
For much of its existence, the Centre succeeded. It attracted residents, office workers, tourists, and shoppers from across the Bay Area. Yet despite its popularity, the mall never fully displaced the city's traditional shopping districts.
Its story is therefore not simply one of decline. Instead, San Francisco Centre illustrates nearly forty years of efforts to redef ine downtown shopping in a city that continually resisted being organized around a single retail destination.
A new kind of downtown mall
The Centre introduced San Francisco to a type of retail previously unseen in the region: an enclosed, vertical shopping mall. One of its most iconic features was the spiral escalators, the first in North America, connecting three levels in a dramatic, space-efficient design that became a hallmark of the mall’s interior.
During the 1990s, San Francisco Centre flourished. It became a premier downtown shopping destination, attracting both tourists and locals with high-end retail options, multiple flagship stores, and brand redundancy that showed its strength—retailers like Kenneth Cole and Aldo operated more than one location in the area, and they still succeeded.
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| The spiral escalators became one of San Francisco Centre's most recognizable features and symbolized the mall's modern urban design. |
The Emporium closes
The closure of The Emporium in 1996 marked the end of one of San Francisco's most important department stores. For generations, suburban shoppers had traveled downtown to visit the store beneath its famous dome, making The Emporium both a retail anchor and a cultural landmark.
Yet the closure produced surprisingly little immediate crisis for San Francisco Centre. Nordstrom had emerged as the mall's dominant draw, and the Centre remained a popular destination throughout the late 1990s.
Instead, The Emporium's empty building created an opportunity. The former department store would become the centerpiece of an ambitious expansion that sought to combine historic preservation, luxury retail, dining, and entertainment within a single downtown complex.
Westfield luxury reinvention
On September 28, 2006, a massive expansion officially debuted under Westfield’s ownership, bringing the mall to 1.5 million square feet, and heralding a new chapter for the property. The updated Westfield San Francisco Centre now spanned five floors, blending historic architecture with a sleek, modern design.
Highlights included a Bloomingdale's department store, a Century Theatres cinema, and new retailers such as Forth & Towne, Aldo Accessories, and The Art of Shaving.
The expansion transformed the former Emporium building into the centerpiece of a larger retail complex, combining luxury shopping, dining, entertainment, and historic preservation under a single roof.
The project preserved and showcased some of the city’s most beautiful retail architecture. The original Emporium dome, hidden since the store's closure, was restored and now rises above the mall’s elegant rotunda. This glass-and-steel structure offers a rare blend of turn-of-the-century grandeur and 21st-century design.
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| The restored Emporium dome became the centerpiece of the 2006 expansion, linking San Francisco's retail past with Westfield's new vision for downtown shopping. |
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| Once hidden after The Emporium closed, the historic dome became the symbolic centerpiece of Westfield's redevelopment of the former department store. |
The Market Street façade of The Emporium retained its historic charm, while the Mission Street side received a modern makeover—complete with a glass curtain wall and a soaring Bloomingdale’s sign, reinforcing the mall’s new identity.
A signature element of the 2006 remodel was the lower-level food court, branded as The Emporium in vintage script. This was more than just a nod to history—it was a place where downtown workers and tourists alike could enjoy diverse, fast-casual cuisine with a local twist.
In addition to the food court, the Centre offered a range of sit-down dining options, helping to position it as a full lifestyle destination. In many ways, Westfield was applying the suburban lifestyle-center model to the center of San Francisco.
The high-water mark of the urban mall
For a time, Westfield San Francisco Centre represented the pinnacle of urban retail innovation. The crowds that flooded in during the grand reopening, the buzz surrounding its exclusive stores, and the seamless blend of past and present made it one of the most visited places downtown.
Yet the Centre's success had begun even before the Westfield expansion. By the late 1990s, San Francisco Centre ranked among the Bay Area's leading shopping destinations. A 1998 Chronicle's Readers' Choice poll ranked San Francisco Centre as the Bay Area's third-best mall, behind Stanford Shopping Center and Stonestown Galleria (San Francisco Examiner, 1998).
The recognition demonstrated that the urban mall concept had succeeded, at least temporarily. San Francisco Centre attracted office workers, tourists, suburban shoppers, and city residents alike, becoming an important part of downtown retail life.
But even as the mall reached its peak, downtown San Francisco began to face new challenges: changing consumer behavior, rising retail vacancies, and shifting urban dynamics.
A city that resisted consolidation
Unlike many suburban shopping centers, San Francisco Centre never became the singular retail destination its developers envisioned. The city's shopping patterns remained unusually decentralized.
Union Square continued to attract luxury retail. Neighborhood business districts such as Chestnut Street, Fillmore Street, Hayes Valley, and Valencia Street developed their own identities. Even Stonestown Galleria maintained a distinct customer base.
San Francisco residents often shopped across multiple districts rather than concentrating activity within a single enclosed center. Tourists, office workers, and convention visitors helped sustain the Centre, but it never entirely replaced the city's traditional commercial streets.
This tension would define the mall throughout its history. Each reinvention—from the original Centre in 1988 to the Westfield expansion in 2006—attempted to create a unified downtown shopping destination. Yet San Francisco repeatedly demonstrated a preference for distributed retail districts over a single dominant center.
When the model changed
In the late 2010s, the mall’s fortunes began to fade. Nordstrom, once the Centre’s crown jewel, started pulling back. Its Stonestown Galleria location closed in 2019, and in 2023, its flagship store at San Francisco Centre shut its doors permanently.
That same year, Westfield stopped making loan payments on the mall, returning the property to its lender. Foot traffic continued to fall, and national media began calling San Francisco Centre one of the most prominent dead malls in the U.S.
In 2025, the last major anchor—Bloomingdale’s—announced its closure. With its two department store anchors gone, San Francisco Centre was left largely hollow, a shadow of its former self.
Legacy of San Francisco Centre
San Francisco Centre closed in January 2026, ending nearly four decades of attempts to create a unified downtown shopping destination.
The project succeeded in many ways. It introduced urban mall retail to San Francisco, restored the Emporium dome, attracted major national retailers, and became a landmark for an entire generation of shoppers.
Yet the Centre also demonstrated the limits of the enclosed mall model within a city defined by multiple commercial districts and constantly changing retail patterns. Unlike many American downtowns, San Francisco never fully consolidated its shopping activity into a single destination.
Today the preserved dome, spiral escalators, and surviving architecture stand as reminders of one of the city's most ambitious retail experiments.
San Francisco Centre spent nearly forty years attempting to bring suburban mall retail into the center of one of America's most decentralized shopping cities. Its repeated reinventions reveal not only changing retail trends, but also the enduring strength of San Francisco's many commercial districts.
Sources
- The Chronicle's Readers' Choice 1998. (1998, September 20). San Francisco Examiner, p. 356.
Comments
Every time I've visited, Bloomingdale's is eerily quiet. Does anyone know if that store is doing well? I know Nordstrom is successful, but I've heard nothing about Bloomingdale's. If you're familiar with the New York store, you'll find this one rather disappointing. No furniture, very limited home furnishings, and not even a branch of Forty Carrots.