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    Owners of Defaulting San Francisco Business Begged for Help from Authorities as Crime Ravaged Shopping Center

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    New emails obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle show that executives of and tenants at the famous and beleaguered Westfield mall in the downtown district of the city begged for help from authorities in the city, but that relief from the crime wave was not provided and so now the mall’s owners are giving up on it.

    According to the Chronicle, the city sent two police officers to patrol the mall daily, but they were far from enough to keep businesses out of harm’s way and present an image of safety to potential patrons of the mall and its businesses. As a result, foot traffic fell precipitously and sales with it.

    In one of the obtained emails, for example, Westfield mall executives said that Claire’s, a youth jewelry store in the mall, did not see “much slow down” in rampant theft and shoplifting even after the two police officers were sent to patrol the facility.

    In another email, this one sent by a Vice President of the parent company of Westfield to the city’s top economic development official after the police officers were sent, the VP said, “I’m also hearing now from our center team that there were two incidents yesterday where people were held up by knife point at the center for theft.”

    So, neither businesses nor patrons were safe and business at the mall fell like a rock. Now, because of that falling business, the formerly successful Westfield San Francisco Center, a once-thriving business that had 70 of the best retail brands housed within it, is defaulting on its more than $550 million loan and giving the keys to the lender.

    A spokesperson for the shopping center, in a statement about the default and the reasons for it, said, “For more than 20 years, Westfield has proudly and successfully operated San Francisco Centre, investing significantly over that time in the vitality of the property. Given the challenging operating conditions in downtown San Francisco, which have led to declines in sales, occupancy and foot traffic, we have made the difficult decision to begin the process to transfer management of the shopping center to our lender to allow them to appoint a receiver to operate the property going forward.”
    In making the move out of San Francisco, the Westfield mall team is following numerous other businesses. Nordstrom is gone, hotels are going out of business and, like Westfield, defaulting on loans and giving the keys to unlucky lenders, and AT&T just followed its rival T-Mobile in leaving San Francisco.
    Unlike some of those businesses, however, the mall will remain open as the former lenders decide what to do with it. Still, it seems unlikely that the mall will make a big recovery unless the city manages to solve the crime and drug problems that are plaguing it, which the soft on crime leftists running the city almost certainly won’t do.