Daiso leases 5K sf in SF’s Stonestown Galleria

It closed its longtime store in San Francisco’s Financial District during the pandemic. Now Daiso, the Japanese discount store, will soon pop up in a mall in Parkside Merced.

Daiso has leased a 5,250-square-foot store at Stonestown Galleria, the enclosed mall at 3251 20th Avenue,, the San Francisco Business Times reported. Financial terms of the lease were not disclosed.

The store, located on the mall’s second level above the Apple Store, had been occupied since 2019 by Planet Playhouse. The new store is undergoing $400,000 in tenant improvements, according to permits.

The lease follows the closure of Daiso’s longtime downtown Financial District store at 570 Market Street during the pandemic, according to the Business Times.

Daiso, which has a bustling location in Japantown, has 12 other stores across the East Bay, Peninsula and San Jose.

It has stores in California, Washington, Texas, Nevada, New Jersey, New York and Hawaii, each specializing in bargain-bin household goods and East Asian snacks and stationary, with a price point of $1.50 per item.

The 775,000-square-foot Stonestown Galleria, owned and managed by Brookfield Properties of New York, opened in 1952 just north of San Francisco State University. It’s now anchored by a Whole Foods Market, Target, Regal, City Sports and The Sports Basement, according to its website.

In October, Brookfield filed plans to redevelop the 41-acre Stonestown site by wrapping the mall with a mixed-use development of buildings from three to 18 stories, containing 3,000 homes, 400,000 square feet of offices, shops and restaurants, and 6 acres of parks and plazas.

The $2 billion project, now undergoing an environmental review, is expected to take 20 years to complete.

In April, Brookfield announced it wanted to redevelop part of a Stonestown anchor space vacated by Nordstrom in 2019 into a 26,000-square-foot parcel distribution center.

— Dana Bartholomew