We could be getting a “Top Golf for basketball”-type sports bar and basketball training academy to replace the shuttered former mall property near SF’s Union Square.<\/p>\n
New bids from developers are reportedly being reviewed by the new owners of the former Westfield SF Centre mall, which we all watched slowly go to its grave<\/a> over the last three years and is now officially an enormous dead mall in the middle of the city. As the SF Standard reports<\/a>, bid proposals were accepted until last Wednesday, at which point the proposal window closed. <\/p>\n The owners of the property since last December are a\u00a0partnership of Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, and they looked at a first round of bid proposals in the first quarter of this year. They had accepted a bid<\/a> from local developers Prado Group and Presidio Bay Ventures in March, which we know involved \u00a0a mix of housing, office, and some retail, but the deal fell through<\/a> in early July for reasons we do not know.<\/p>\n The Chronicle surmised<\/a> that one key reason could be the complicated ownership and land-lease structure attached to the property, with the majority of it still owned by the SF Unified School District \u2014 who want to keep collecting revenue from the property based on a 60-year lease signed back in early 1980s.<\/p>\n But hopefully another bidder will prove more resilient, and successful, in negotiating this time, and we’ll have to wait to see what the winning proposal will be this time.<\/p>\n The Standard shares a few details from one of the bidders, who may or may not have submitted a proposal earlier this year as well. The plan comes from a partnership of Urban Land Development (ULD) and TMG Partners, and focuses on transforming the former mall into a multi-level sports complex with both public-facing businesses and a private, members-only club and basketball academy.<\/p>\n This is apparently a dream of local developer Jon Mayeda of ULD, who, per the Standard, coaches high school basketball and has been pitching a similar sort of sports complex for years.<\/p>\n The proposal includes a below-ground food court where the existing food court is, and unnamed businesses occupying the bottom three floors, which would be open to the public. The only specific thing the Standard culled from the proposal is JumpShot Live, a sports bar and event venue from former Super Bowl champ with the Green Back Packers Derrick Mayes, which is slated for the third floor of the complex. <\/p>\n JumpShot Live, which does not yet have any physical locations, is part of a post-football venture for Mayes that is launching out of Dallas. As Dallas Innovates reported<\/a> two years ago, the plan is for large, Top Golf-esque complexes with dozens of gaming bays, each equipped with “patent-pending tech” that “allows the hoop and net to move dynamically along each 40- by 10-foot lane.” Mayes boasted at the time, in a statement, that this will be “one of the most innovative and technologically advanced entertainment experiences in the world,” allowing people to play simulated basketball games with physical hoops.<\/p>\n The fourth floor of the building, under this proposal, would feature a six-court basketball facility with a training academy led by an organization founded by NBA coach and Bay Area native Phil Handy. And the top floor \u2014 maybe where the movie theater was? \u2014 would feature an eight-court volleyball facility.<\/p>\n This is not the first sports concept that has been proposed for the property. Back when she was still mayor, London Breed also promoted an idea that was being floated to install a major-league soccer stadium<\/a> on the property, though it was unclear if that was even a feasible notion.<\/p>\n In a reflection of the state of retail in the US, particularly in urban centers where malls aren’t really what people come to a city for, the upscale, Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom-anchored SF Centre barely lasted 15 years before the signs of its demise started appearing. The prognosis for the complex took a sharp southward turn in May 2023 when Nordstrom announced it was closing<\/a>, which was followed two weeks later by the Westfield Corporation walking away from the property<\/a> and defaulting on its loans, which sent the complex into receivership.<\/p>\n Some stores held on for a while, though the Century Cinema quickly shut down<\/a> as well, and then Bloomingdale’s called it quits<\/a> last summer. The final tenant in the place was the bar Executive Order, which had its own entrance on the Mission Street side of the building, and which managed to stay open until June 30, 2026<\/a>.<\/p>\n