San Francisco is working on the conceptual design of a potential soccer stadium that one day could replace the struggling downtown mall that Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield recently decided to hand back to lenders, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Mayor London Breed told reporters and business leaders gathered at the Chamber of Commerce’s Financial District offices that the city and the architecture firm Gensler were doing “some preliminary design work on what potentially is possible” for a stadium that could be built at Westfield’s San Francisco Centre site.

Breed offered few specifics, and her office said the firm is in the very early stages of conducting a feasibility study, reported the Chronicle. Her ability to get a stadium built on the site — an idea she floated publicly in June — is also limited, since the city does not own the mall, nor does it currently have a professional soccer team.

However, Breed on Tuesday struck a hopeful tone about the prospect of developing a new facility in an ailing retail corridor that’s been struggling with an exodus of stores, including the anchor Nordstrom space set to soon close at the San Francisco Centre.

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