San Francisco’s struggling downtown shopping district received a piece of good news this week courtesy of global fashion giant Zara, which plans to open a huge new store there, according to Mayor Daniel Lurie.
The mayor announced the news in a gleeful video posted Monday on X. The Spanish retailer owned by Inditex — which announced last year that it would exit its current home at 250 Post St. in Union Square — plans to open what Lurie called a “huge, huge” four-story flagship store a block away at 400 Post St. spanning some 40,000 square feet.
“Union Square is on its way back! San Francisco is on its way back!” Lurie declared in the video of himself standing in front of the vintage 1909 corner building, currently sporting “For Lease” signs in its storefront windows. The four-story building has remained largely vacant since low-cost footwear chain DSW left in 2021 amid an exodus of retailers from the city’s premier shopping district, according to CoStar.
Union Square has hemorrhaged stores in recent years, as global forces such as e-commerce and crime concerns forced out businesses ranging from locally based T-shirt sellers to national department store chains.
But recent months have brought signs of a nascent turnaround, with several brands announcing new leases. Most notably, video game giant Nintendo announced that its long-awaited second U.S. store would open at 331 Powell St. in Union Square’s Westin St. Francis San Francisco on May 15.
“I personally have offers on five different buildings, and we are touring almost daily,” Colliers broker Julie Taylor told CoStar News in March. She said she has witnessed an increase in leasing momentum in the last few months.
A spokesman for Inditex, Zara’s parent company, did not immediately return a request for comment. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the company still plans to close its store at 250 Post St. after its lease expires early next year but has signed a long-term lease at the new location to occupy 40,000 square feet, nearly double the size of the current store.
Retail rebound
Zara has two other stores in the city, in the Stonestown Galleria shopping center and at the embattled San Francisco Centre mall on Market Street, which has been bleeding tenants in recent months. The fate of that Zara store appears precarious, as the company’s lease for its roughly 30,000-square-foot space in the downtown mall is set to expire in March 2027, according to CoStar.
The mall has seen a well-documented exodus of retailers in recent years — the losses have included its anchor tenants, Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s — and is scheduled for sale at a foreclosure auction in June.
Business owners and city officials have pushed hard to bring back Union Square. Lurie sought to allay fears about crime this year by announcing the creation of a “hospitality zone” task force to supplement police efforts to boost public safety downtown for shoppers and tourists.
“We will continue to work every day to deliver safe and clean streets,” the mayor said in the video.
February’s NBA All-Star Game in San Francisco also gave the neighborhood a boost. Powell Street, a former retail stretch in Union Square that’s been particularly hard hit since the pandemic, was transformed for the occasion into “All-Star Alley,” with retail pop-ups, events and public art festooning vacant storefronts. Footwear giant Shoe Palace staged a splashy All-Star-themed event to promote its move into 16,000 square feet at 301 Geary St. in a space that had been empty since the fast-fashion retail chain Express closed its doors in 2023.
The nonprofit Union Square Alliance has been staging special events and public art in an effort to bring back shoppers and retailers alike.
Brands that cater to the super wealthy have simultaneously spread out, with ritzy names like Chanel, Maison Goyard, Brunello Cucinelli and Bulgari expanding their footprints in the neighborhood or opening stores.