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San Francisco

SF Mayor London Breed pitches soccer pitch to replace Westfield mall

“We could even tear down the whole building and build a whole new soccer stadium”

Mayor London Breed and Westfield San Francisco Centre at 865 Market Street
Mayor London Breed and Westfield San Francisco Centre at 865 Market Street (Getty, Google Maps)

A 1.5-million-square-foot shopping mall in Downtown San Francisco could be replaced by a soccer pitch.

Two weeks after Westfield walked away from its half-empty San Francisco Centre at 865 Market Street, Mayor London Breed suggested it be razed for a soccer stadium, SFGate reported.

The mayor kicked out her South of Market proposal during an on-stage interview at Bloomberg’s Technology Summit in San Francisco.

When asked if the city were in a doom loop, with vacating businesses spurring other exits with diminishing foot traffic, Breed emphasized how few people actually shop in brick-and-mortar stores.

She also spoke of her push to ease the conversion of offices into homes — and the need to be creative with Downtown space, noting that Airbnb’s headquarters was built from a former  jewelry mart.

“You can convert certain spaces,” Breed told the crowd. “A Westfield mall could become, you know, something completely different than what it currently is. It could be a place where — we could even tear down the whole building and build a whole new soccer stadium. 

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“We can create lab space or look at it as a new company in some other capacity.” 

The mayor had already planned to lure people into Downtown this summer via the world’s most popular sport. The Crossing at East Cut and Embarcadero Plaza will host free public screenings of Women’s World Cup games.

Soccer pitches are about 110 meters long and 75 meters wide, though sizes vary, according to SFGate. PayPal Park in San Jose is built on a sprawling tract of land near the city’s airport. The Giants’ Oracle Park is built across 12 acres.

The news site had pitched replacing the mall’s vacating five-story Nordstrom with pickleball courts, in short supply in San Francisco.

The property was appraised in 2016 at $1.2 billion. But an exodus of retailers, capped by Nordstrom’s announced pullout last month, left the mall 55 percent occupied. The Paris-based owner of Westfield said this month it would abandon the mall because of “challenging operating conditions.”

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— Dana Bartholomew

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