Another Walgreens bites the dust in SF, bringing closures to at least 11

Yet another San Francisco Walgreens is shutting down, this time in the financial district.

The Walgreens at 141 Kearny St. is set to permanently close Feb. 22, according to an article by SFGATE based on a tweet from a San Francisco Business Times reporter. It was at least the 11th shutter since 2019.

Walgreens cited “dynamics of the local market and changing buying habits of our customer.” In the past, the company has attributed closures to rising crime – reasoning that Mayor London Breed doesn’t buy.

“Organized retail crime continues to be a challenge facing retailers across San Francisco, and we are not immune to that,” a Walgreens spokesperson told SFGATE last year, when it closed five stores.

Mayor Breed has said oversaturation was a more likely explanation.

“They are saying that’s the primary reason, but I also think when a place is not generating revenue, and when they’re saturated — SF has a lot of Walgreens locations all over the city — so I do think that there are other factors that come into play,” the mayor told reporters in October.

The mayor did say in December that she would boost police overtime in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District to tackle thefts in the area.

Property theft made national headlines in November, when officials had to restrict access to Union Square, the city’s retail center, during a weekend of smash=and-grab robberies. Thieves hit everything from high-end fashion brands such as Louis Vuitton as well as cannabis dispensaries.

In October, Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley dubbed San Francisco a “shoplifter’s paradise,” saying California had effectively decriminalized shoplifting under $950.

[SFGATE] — Gabriel Poblete

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