By Laura Waxmann,Reporter June 6, 2024 (SFChroncile.com.)
The new San Francisco Nintendo store will be opening on Powell Street, on the same block as the Westin St. Francis.Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle
A vacant storefront directly across the street from San Francisco’s Union Square will soon bear new signage: “Nintendo San Francisco.”
The iconic video game company’s announcement last month that it has taken up a space in the city’s premier retail district stoked both excitement and questions: The area has lost more longtime retailers in recent years than it has gained, and Nintendo’s lease commitment was hailed as a much-needed boost by downtown stakeholders, including Mayor London Breed. But critical details about the new space, like its location, were not disclosed.
Permits filed with the city’s Department of Building Inspection on Wednesday provide answers: Nintendo will be moving into a prominent 11,000-square-foot retail space at the corner of Powell and Geary streets.
The space, located at 331 Powell St., is part of the 1,253-room Westin St. Francis, the city’s third largest hotel. The location is roughly the size of Nintendo’s only other U.S. store, which spans two stories and 10,000 square feet in New York City’s Rockefeller Center.
The permits pulled this week show that a 42-inch by 42-inch illuminated exterior sign will be erected at the Powell Street entrance of Nintendo’s new space. Additional signage will be installed at that entrance and at the storefront’s second entrance on Geary street.
The space’s entrance doors and sidelights will be replaced, and new exterior lighting will be installed at its existing awnings, according to an application filed with the city’s Planning Department in April. The tenant improvements are expected to cost about $120,000.
Nintendo has said previously that it will open the new location in 2025. On Thursday, the company acknowledged that its store will be located in the “Union Square shopping district,” but declined to confirm the exact location, stating it would share more information at a later date. The Westin declined to comment.
Julie Taylor, a veteran retail broker with Colliers, said that Nintendo’s Union Square location “makes sense.”
“It’s an incredibly high-profile corner, and they have an incredibly high-profile location in New York, so this is really parallel in the quality,” Taylor said.
Taylor estimated that Nintendo’s new space has been largely vacant for the better part of the past decade — it once housed women’s clothing brand BCBG and athleisure brand Fila. More recently, it has featured pop-ups.
The deal is a bright spot in what otherwise has been a tumultuous time for Union Square, marked by retail closures and a noticeable drop in visitors in the wake of the pandemic.
In February, the area’s most prominent retailer, Macy’s, announced that it plans to shutter its 400,000-square-foot location on Geary Street. The loss marks one of the biggest retail closures that the city has ever seen. Retailer H&M permanently closed its West Coast flagship store on Powell Street, around the corner from Macy’s, in 2020. Others that have shuttered major Union Square stores or announced closures in recent years include Uniqlo and North Face.
While the losses are heavy, there have been a few gains: Luxury watch retailers A. Lange & Söhne and Breitling opened Union Square locations this year, and kitchenware and home furnishings store Williams Sonoma delayed the closure of its long-standing Union Square location by a year.
Reach Laura Waxmann: laura.waxmann@sfchronicle.com
June 6, 2024
Laura Waxmann
REPORTER
Laura Waxmann covers the business community with a focus on commercial real estate, development, retail and the future of San Francisco’s downtown. Prior to joining The Chronicle in 2023, she reported on San Francisco’s changing real estate and economic landscape in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic for the San Francisco Business Times.Waxmann was born and raised in Frankfurt, Germany, but has called San Francisco home since 2007. She’s reported on a variety of topics including housing, homelessness, education and local politics for the San Francisco Examiner, Mission Local and El Tecolote.
