As foot traffic rises in one of San Francisco’s largest malls, another lags well behind, underlining the role geography plays for retail properties.
The Stonestown Galleria, in the southwestern corner of the city, beat pre-pandemic foot traffic levels each month from November through February, according to the San Francisco Business Times, citing cell phone data collected by Placer.ai. Traffic in February was 8 percent more than in 2020, compared with about 11 percent below pre-pandemic days in September, the newspaper said.
Downtown’s Westfield San Francisco Centre has been a lot quieter over the same time period: Traffic fell 40 percent or more each month from 2019 and plunged 54 percent in January from the pre-Covid era.
The difference shows that downtown is rebounding slower than areas next to residential neighborhoods, the Business Times said. People who used to work in downtown offices have stayed home for the better part of two years. Some of them may never return to that lifestyle even as companies nationwide set firm dates to return to the office.
Westfield San Francisco is climbing out of a deeper hole. Traffic was 48 percent below pre-pandemic days in September, compared to 11 percent at Stonestown. Moreover, some reasons for optimism remain: San Francisco has ended a mask requirement indoors, and Mayor London Breed and a coalition of the city’s largest employers have pledged to bring thousands of office workers back to downtown by the end of the month. The area is becoming “re-energized,” Westfield San Francisco Centre’s Jason Dyer said to the Business Times.
More students are back now too, Darren Iverson, Stonestown’s general manager, told the newspaper, mentioning nearby Lowell High School and San Francisco State University. “Everything is coming into place that was impacted in 2020,” he said.
[San Francisco Business Times] — Matthew Niksa
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