The city’s largest mall, which had planned to shut down at the end of the weekend, was locked and dark Saturday morning.
A sign posted at the entrance to San Francisco Centre said the downtown shopping hub was “closed until further notice.”
An employee at Ecco, the mall’s last remaining tenant, confirmed that the shoe store – and the mall itself – had permanently shuttered earlier than expected, ahead of Monday’s previously announced closure date.
The early shutdown marks the final chapter for what was once San Francisco’s largest and most prominent shopping mall, after years of vacancies and tenant departures hollowed out a downtown retail landmark.
San Francisco Centre had been in the process of winding down for months under its new owners, a group of lenders, which purchased the mall’s debt in November. By this week, Ecco was the only remaining tenant in what was once a bustling, multistory retail hub at Market and Fifth streets.
Earlier in the week, BART closed the entrance connecting Powell Street Station directly to the mall, sealing off a passageway that for decades funneled commuters and shoppers into the shopping center. The closure fueled speculation online that the shutdown was imminent.
A sign posted at the entrance to San Francisco Centre on Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026, announces that the mall has closed. (Courtesy of Nicole Frugé )
The mall had originally announced it would close at the end of business Sunday, when Ecco was expected to shut its doors. Instead, the closure came early, bringing a quicker-than-anticipated end to the shopping center’s long decline.
San Francisco Centre has struggled for years with falling foot traffic, a problem exacerbated by the pandemic and the shift to remote work. The downturn in activity around the Powell Street corridor contributed to the departures of major anchor tenants Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s, accelerating what many retail experts have described as a downward spiral.
Brokerage firm CBRE has been hired to market the property, though real estate experts have cautioned that redeveloping the massive, transit-linked complex would be extremely expensive and technically challenging.
What happens next remains uncertain. City officials and planners have floated ideas ranging from housing and arts venues to large-scale entertainment uses, but any redevelopment of the massive, transit-linked site would likely take years and require significant investment.
Mall management did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the early closure.
This article originally published at San Francisco’s largest mall unexpectedly closes ahead of schedule.