A frightening assessment shows 95 downtown San Francisco establishments, or more than half of the total, have shuttered in the last three years.
Major stores continue to flee the city because of the high crime rate.
Williams-Sonoma’s announcement that they will close shop in 2024.
Ray-Ban, Brooks Brothers, Lululemon, Christian Louboutin, and Marmot are some of the big names that have folded.
There have been 12 new stores open in the area since 2020, but already two of them have closed or announced plans to do so.
There will be a net loss of around 90 enterprises in Union Square, even though the Union Square Alliance believes that roughly seven more retail establishments hope to launch by next year.
Many shops in downtown San Francisco have given up and relocated because of the high crime rate.
Office Depot, Anthropologie, and Whole Foods have all left since they made store closure announcements in April. Meanwhile, a spokesman for Whole Foods said the shop was closed because of employee safety concerns.
Stores like Target, which are still open, have resorted to placing all their merchandise behind glass to prevent theft. On April 20th, a video was uploaded to TikTok showing everything safely encased in glass.
Two cannabis dispensaries also closed during the epidemic. They were not included in the tally, nor were service-oriented enterprises.
H&M, Gap, Nordstrom, Marshall’s, and Banana Republic has pulled out of the coastal city.
While statistics show that crime in San Francisco is decreasing, that is because crime has been redefined. Soros-backed DAs have given a golden pass to criminals, lowering the penalties to near non-existence. Also, when there is nothing left to steal, the theft rate will decrease.
The city’s citizens continue to fight a crime pandemic, highlighted most recently by the murder of Cash App CEO Bob Lee and the violent daylight attack on the city’s former fire commissioner.
A 2022 survey by the National Retail Federation found that organized retail crime costs businesses over $100 billion annually.
Theft at retail establishments rose by 27% that year.
