The city’s largest mall, which was scheduled to close this weekend, was locked and dark on Saturday morning.
A sign posted at the entrance to San Francisco Center said the downtown shopping center was “closed until further notice.”
An employee at Ecco, the mall’s last remaining tenant, confirmed that the shoe store – and the mall itself – had closed permanently earlier than expected, ahead of the closing date announced earlier on Monday.
The early closing marks the final chapter for what was once San Francisco’s largest and most prominent shopping center, after years of vacancies and departures of empty tenants at the downtown retail landmark.
The San Francisco Center had been in the process of winding up for months under its new owners, a group of lenders, who bought the mall’s debt in November. Until this week, Ecco was the only remaining tenant in what was once a bustling, multi-story retail center at Market and Fifth streets.
Earlier in the week, BART closed the entrance that connects the Powell Street Station directly to the mall, sealing off a passageway that for decades brought commuters and shoppers to the shopping center. The shutdown sparked online speculation that a shutdown was imminent.
A sign posted at the entrance of San Francisco Center on Saturday, January 24, 2026, announces that the mall has closed. (Courtesy of Nicole Frugé)
The mall had originally announced that it would close at the end of business Sunday, when Ecco was expected to close its doors. Instead, the closure came early, bringing a quicker-than-expected end to the mall’s long decline.
Downtown San Francisco has struggled for years with declining foot traffic, a problem exacerbated by the pandemic and the shift to remote work. The decline in activity around the Powell Street corridor contributed to the departure of major anchor tenants Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s, accelerating what many retail experts described as a downward spiral.
Brokerage firm CBRE has been hired to market the property, although real estate experts have warned that redeveloping the massive transit-linked complex would be expensive and technically challenging.
What happens next remains uncertain. City officials and planners have floated ideas ranging from housing and art venues to large-scale entertainment uses, but any redevelopment of the massive, transit-linked site would likely take years and require significant investment.
Mall management did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the early closing.
This article originally published in San Francisco’s largest mall unexpectedly closes ahead of schedule.