SF Mayor London Breed doubles down on soccer stadium to replace mall

San Francisco doesn’t have a professional soccer team. It doesn’t own the beleaguered San Francisco Centre mall. Yet the city is now designing a soccer stadium to replace it.

Mayor London Breed said the city and architecture firm Gensler were doing “some preliminary design work on what potentially is possible” for a stadium at 865 Market Street, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The conceptual design would size up a potential soccer stadium that could replace the nine-story Downtown mall that Westfield decided to give up to lenders in lieu of paying off its  $558 million loan.

The mayor offered few details. Her office said San Francisco-based Gensler is in the early stages of its feasibility study. What wasn’t disclosed is the cost of the study, or who will pay for it.

Breed, who kicked off the stadium idea last spring, has limited ability to build an arena, given that the city doesn’t own the 1.5-million-square-foot mall and doesn’t have a pro soccer squad.

It’s not clear if San Francisco residents want a soccer stadium.

But the mayor was optimistic about developing a new sports attraction in a downtown with an exodus of stores, including the 312,000-square-foot Nordstrom to close this fall at San Francisco Centre, along with its nearby Nordstrom Rack.

“We of course want to give people an understanding of what could happen and get a developer and others excited about making investments into the stadium as a way to diversify what happens in the downtown area,” Breed told reporters and business leaders at the Chamber of Commerce’s Financial District office.

She trumpeted the mall’s proximity to BART, Muni and cable cars, and said a stadium there could not only host professional soccer matches, but also concerts. That suggests a stadium seating capacity of at least 25,000 people.

The mall’s commercial mortgage-backed securities loan has numerous lenders, who have not been disclosed. Operations of the mall will be determined by an unidentified receiver. 

— Dana Bartholomew

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