San Francisco Centre runs nine floors up from Market Street in downtown San Francisco, California. The block had no room to spread sideways, so the mall was built upward, with the department store on top.
Nordstrom opened on the top five floors in October 1988 and stayed for 35 years. The building expanded across the old Emporium site in 2006 and reached about 1.5 million square feet.
Nordstrom's floors have been empty since August 2023. The rest of the building emptied around them, and by late 2025 the mall was about 93 percent vacant.
It closed in January 2026. Lenders had already taken the building through foreclosure in November 2025, and after a failed sale, it went back on the market. Bids were due on September 9, and no buyer has been announced.
San Francisco Shopping Centre opened in 1988
Thousands of people stood on the sidewalk at Fifth and Market before 9:30 on the morning of October 7, 1988, waiting for a store they couldn't see from the street.
Nordstrom had taken the top five floors of a nine-story building.
Only a few specialty shops had opened underneath, and the only way up was the machinery the developer had installed for that exact job: curved escalators, the first spiral escalator system in the United States, and express elevators that skipped the shops altogether.
The stack came from the site.
An operating department store held the eastern half of the block, which left the San Francisco Shopping Centre a narrow footprint and no room for the wide single-level floor plate an American regional mall usually got, so it went up instead.
Nordstrom paid for the top of the climb with a retractable skylight over its upper floor.
The basement got a small food court. The centre put 18 valet parkers on the opening rush.
About 60,000 people came through by noon, and the shopping district that had ended at Union Square now reached Fifth and Market.
Half the block sat empty for a decade
The other half of the block had been selling since 1896. At 835 Market Street, the Emporium's glass-and-metal dome stretched 102 feet across.
Below it, two levels of columns ringed a rotunda that rose 51 feet through three stories, and the building carried the city's highest downtown historic classification.
Federated Department Stores bought the Emporium's parent, and the store closed in 1996.
Macy's used the ground floor for furniture in 1997 while its Union Square flagship was renovated. After that the building waited.
In October 2000, the city approved a redevelopment plan covering the Emporium and 11 adjacent structures.
A preservation group and five residents challenged the approvals under CEQA and city planning law, arguing that the Emporium's Category I classification put hard limits on demolishing it.
The Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment against them in September 2002, finding support for the city's conclusion that the building in its existing configuration had no substantial remaining market value or reasonable use.
The approved plan kept the Market Street facade and office block, along with the rotunda and dome.
Lifting a 250-ton dome 60 feet
Construction began on November 13, 2003.
Joining the two buildings meant dealing with floors that didn't line up, and almost all of the Emporium interior was stripped out.
For a time the Market Street facade stood by itself on steel bracing.
The 1908 dome, a roughly 250-ton assembly of glass and metal, was detached and lifted about 60 feet, leaving room for the replacement structure to rise beneath it.
A separate fight grew out of what was supposed to survive.
The preservation deal covered roughly 65 feet of historic fabric behind the Market Street facade, but the upper office portion in that zone was demolished in 2004.
Forest City and Westfield relied on a Planning Department demolition permit; the Redevelopment Agency said the work violated the development agreement.
Months of hearings ended in 2005 with a $2.5 million settlement for historic-preservation work.
Pieces of the 1936 Art Deco escalators and 1908 stairways were also saved.
When the complex opened on September 28, 2006, the dome sat over the new multilevel atrium, and the old and new sections met at five levels.
The concourse opened into Powell Street station
Public parking was left out of the expansion.
Below street level, the mall met Powell Street station at two entrances for BART and Muni Metro riders, including a new one beside the station's new fare gates.
Everything meant to hold a visitor past a shopping trip was stacked around that connection. A nine-screen Century multiplex took the upper level.
The concourse paired about 15 fast-casual counters with a shared dining area where diners used china and metal flatware; Bristol Farms took 30,000 square feet on the same level.
San Francisco State University took classrooms and offices on levels 5 and 6.
It worked for most of a decade.
Retail sales came to $599.3 million for the year to March 2016, out of a complex that had never built a parking space of its own.
Level 4 stopped being a shopping floor
In May 2015, Westfield turned 37,000 square feet on level 4 into Bespoke, a coworking and events operation with more than 160 rentable desks, a climbing wall, a croquet area, and sleep nooks alongside pop-up retail space.
Bristol Farms closed on January 27, 2017, and its 30,000 square feet on the concourse were still empty two years later.
In 2018 Westfield filed to convert up to 49,999 square feet on floors 7 and 8 of the older building to general office use, with rooftop terraces and changes to parts of Nordstrom, and the Planning Commission approved the allocation in December 2019.
San Francisco State's 125,000-square-foot lease ran out on December 31, 2021, and the university moved its downtown campus to Spear Street.
By then the grocery on the concourse and the university upstairs were both gone, and the owner had already pushed work space into level 4 while holding approval to convert floors 7 and 8 to offices.
San Francisco Centre is closed and for sale
Nordstrom said in May 2023 that it wouldn't renew after 35 years. The theater closed on June 15.
Nordstrom closed on August 27, its doors went behind security gates, and the gold sign came off the exterior wall the following month.
Bloomingdale's closed on March 31, 2025 and took 164 jobs with it. By September 2025, the complex was about 93 percent vacant.
H&M closed on January 11, 2026, the last restaurant three days later, and the building was locked on January 24, two days before the announced date.
San Francisco Centre is a closed shopping and office complex on the block bounded by Market, Fourth, Mission, and Fifth streets in San Francisco, California.
It opened in October 1988 as the San Francisco Shopping Centre, traded for most of two decades as Westfield San Francisco Centre, spent part of 2024 under the name Emporium Centre San Francisco, and has had no operating tenants since January 2026.
What's for sale is the stack.
Two developers won exclusive rights to buy in March 2026 and withdrew in July after due diligence, with the school district ground lease under part of the building among the problems.
The owner extended that lease through 2082, cut the annual rent, and set a new bid deadline of September 9.
One prospective buyer has been looking at putting basketball, soccer, and volleyball courts into the former Nordstrom, five floors up.
Inside, the 1896 facade and the 1908 dome are still standing in a building closed to the public, and the passage from Powell Street station is sealed.
The mortgage trust, Macy's, and the school district each own a piece of the block, so any single use for about 1.5 million square feet needs all three.
The September 9 bid date has passed. No buyer has been named.
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