{"id":26341,"date":"2023-05-06T13:54:58","date_gmt":"2023-05-06T20:54:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=26341"},"modified":"2023-05-06T13:55:13","modified_gmt":"2023-05-06T20:55:13","slug":"what-comes-next-for-s-f-s-emptying-downtown-heres-the-inconvenient-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/05\/06\/what-comes-next-for-s-f-s-emptying-downtown-heres-the-inconvenient-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"What comes next for S.F.\u2019s emptying downtown? Here\u2019s the inconvenient truth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/a>John King<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

May 5, 2023 (SFChronicle.com)<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comments<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"For
For lease signs hang from a vacant building at 54 Geary St., beside the Alexander McQueen store at 58\u00a0Geary St. The vacancies have become a common sight in the city\u2019s retail district.Yalonda M. James\/The Chronicle<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Turn back the clock to early 2021, when vaccines to contain COVID<\/a> were reducing the palpable danger of being among other people, and it was reasonable to expect that the \u201cnew normal\u201d would look pretty much like what came before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

San Francisco\u2019s Union Square<\/a> shows how naive such hopes were. The question is what comes next. And, honestly, it\u2019s hard to think that anyone really knows what that answer will be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This reality is being driven home right now by something that might seem separate \u2014 Nordstrom\u2019s announcement<\/a> that it will close its mammoth department store atop Westfield San Francisco Centre<\/a> at Fifth and Market streets. But the vertical mall that opened in 1988 and expanded in 2006 redefined the map of San Francisco\u2019s retail core, to the point that Union Square \u2014 once a term reserved for the plaza bounded by Geary, Powell, Post and Stockton streets \u2014 became synonymous with the downtown\u2019s retail zone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than that, Union Square conjured images of a cosmopolitan concentration of shops and hotels and theaters and restaurants \u2014 an urban experience that the suburbs can\u2019t match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s not the case these days. Except in a negative sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More for you<\/p>\n\n\n\n