Flagship San Francisco Store Among 150 Macy’s Sites Set to Close

The 95-year-old Macy’s in San Francisco’s Union Square is among the 150 stores set to close, in what the San Francisco Chronicle described as “a major setback to the city’s premier shopping district and its larger downtown recovery efforts.” The loss of the 400,000-square-foot department store will represent of the biggest retail closures the city has ever seen.

The store will remain open until Macy’s, Inc. finds a buyer for the property, Mayor London Breed said in a statement. “The process to undergo the sale of their building to a new owner with their own vision for this site will take time, and Macy’s will stay open for the foreseeable future and people will remain employed at the store,” said Breed.

Opened in 1929 by O’Connor, Moffat & Co., the 244,000-square-foot, eight-story store was taken over by Macy’s in 1945 and rebranded under the parent company’s name in 1947. A major expansion took place two years later, followed in 1995 by the takeover of the I. Magnin building, which expanded the location to 1.1 million square feet until the Magnin building’s sale in 2018.

CBRE VP Alex Sagues told the Chronicle, “The question is, ‘How relevant is a department store in the city of San Francisco today? ’ And is that really reflective of the consumers’ tastes.”