Sears: Soon to be Found Only in History Books

The Sears store in Concord, CA (SFGate)

When we moved to the Bay Area in the mid-70's there was a Sears, Roebuck & Co. store in or near every town. I've bought Kenmore washers, dryers, and refrigerators from Sears in Fremont, Daly City, and San Mateo. I've had cars repaired at the Sears in Palo Alto and San Mateo. The Sears catalog we got in the mail was as thick as a phonebook and far more colorful. 50 years later Sears will soon have only one store in California:

With the impending closures of the company’s Whittier and Burbank outposts in Southern California, the massive location in Concord’s Sunvalley Shopping Center will likely be the sole survivor in the state.

Sears is now but a shadow of its former self. Perhaps best known for its mail-order catalog, auto centers, vast quantities of tools and appliances and portrait studios that pumped out millions of cheesy family photos over the decades, the 139-year-old chain that once boasted about 3,500 stores is slated to only have six in the entire country, according to the Mercury News.

Like Pan Am, Blockbuster, Woolworth, and Radio Shack, Sears once dominated its markets and was an important part of the business landscape. Soon it will exist only in our memories.

Finding Home 8,000 miles Away

Bangkok's Terminal 21 (Andrew Chamings/SFGATE)

San Francisco's busiest and arguably most beautiful mall is in Thailand.[bold added]

8,000 miles away in Thailand, malls are thriving, and one in particular has devoted tens of thousands of square feet of gleaming floor space to a rosier view of San Francisco.

On a recent family trip to Bangkok, alongside tuk-tuk food tours and a night at the legendary Muay Thai boxing stadium, the city’s preponderance of malls were high on the list. There’s the ginormous Iconsiam complex on the river, which can be accessed by boat and features 7,000 shops over 10 stories and an IMAX theater. There’s the maze-like MBK mall where bartering is encouraged and vendors hawk dubious high-end designer gear for pennies. And, of course, there are the vibrant and chaotic outdoor night markets dotted across the city, replete with some of the best street food in the world. But at Terminal 21, a huge airport-themed luxury megamall on the busy Sukhumvit Road thoroughfare, Bangkok pays homage to San Francisco.

...A giant Golden Gate Bridge replica, hanging over the entire mall below, even features little cars driving across the bay. While I was there, a group of schoolgirls took selfies in front of the towering International Orange structure. Other nice details on the floor include the Haight-Ashbury intersection, two Tony Bennett-inspired heart sculptures, a nearly full-size California Street cable car replica on a turnaround and a giant crab directing shoppers to the restrooms.

Its real-world griminess has not yet displaced the idealized version of San Francisco in the world's popular imagination. There's still time to turn it around, but don't wait too long, San Francisco.

Hillsdale Mall: Food Destination

Hot Dog on a Stick is no longer at Hillsdale (Flickr)

When we moved to Foster City at the end of the '70's the Peninsula, except for tony towns like Hillsborough and Atherton, was decidedly middle class. We shopped at Hillsdale Mall in San Mateo for most of our non-grocery needs. At Sears we repaired our cars and bought Kenmore washing machines, dryers, and refrigerators. We went to Macy's for fancier clothes and personal items than could be found at Sears.

The food court was just a place to grab a bite in between stores. Burger King and Panda Express were popular, but I liked Hot Dog on a Stick; the dough-wrapped dog's crispy exterior dipped in mustard and a fresh lemonade hit the spot.

Over the years Peninsula shopping centers have either been demolished for housing or have been remodeled to appeal to upscale clientele.

Hillsdale's design renovation and new restaurants has been met with approval by SFGate food reporter Susana Guerrero:

When a bamboo basket of brightly colored soup dumplings arrives at my table inside Palette Tea Garden restaurant, I can’t help but marvel at the transformation of Hillsdale Shopping Center.

Palette's dumplings (SFGate)

The large Cantonese restaurant, which opened this second Bay Area outpost, its first outside of San Francisco, in 2020, is among a wave of new eateries that have planted roots at the bustling Peninsula mall in recent years. The 71-year-old San Mateo mall has been on a steady remodeling kick since at least 2016, when it tore out its dated food court. In 2018, it unveiled an elegant dining terrace that featured new restaurants like Blue Whale Poke Bar & Grill, Kuro-Obi ramen bar and thve Bay Area’s first Uncle Tetsu Japanese Cheesecake.

Just outside the dining terrace, Hillsdale gained a Shake Shack and the Refuge, which has been featured on Guy Fieri’s “Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives.” With new additions like Michelin-recognized Flores and the all-you-can-eat restaurant Mikiya Wagyu Shabu House, which opened earlier this year, it’s no longer the mall of my childhood.

Hillsdale's restaurants and food court are now a destination rather than an afterthought. Over the past year I've gone to the mall to dine more often than to shop.

Stonestown Galleria: Foodie Paradise

Our lunch at Marugame Udon

For the past decade, even during the COVID lockdown, we've stopped at Stonestown Galleria whenever passing through San Francisco because of the food. From 2019:

In recent years, the 66-year-old mall in the Outer Avenues has quickly and quietly become a top culinary destination in San Francisco, thanks to a flood of new restaurants that have brought crowds ready to line up for freshly made noodles, fruity boba tea and, most recently, Japanese souffle pancakes.

In 2024 Stonestown is adding more restaurants:

The San Francisco mall already considered by some to be a foodie paradise is about to get another infusion of trendy eateries. Three new restaurants are opening at Stonestown Galleria in the next year...

Le Soleil, a Vietnamese restaurant in the Inner Richmond, is expected to open a second SF location at the mall by the end of the year. The restaurant, which serves dishes such as bo luc lac (shaking beef) and imperial rolls with pork and vegetables, also has a Hong Kong location. Le Soleil will take over the former Banana Republic space, reported KRON-TV.

Supreme Dumplings, a Seattle area restaurant known for its soup dumplings, is expected to open at Stonestown by the end of 2024 or early 2025. With two existing restaurants in Bellevue and Kirkland, Washington, this will be Supreme Dumplings’ first California restaurant. The restaurant will be in the former LensCrafters space on the second floor of the mall, according to KRON.

Kizuki Ramen & Izakaya, a Japanese chain with over a dozen U.S. locations, is also slated to open at Stonestown in the first quarter of 2025. The bulk of its American restaurants are located in the Seattle area, with this one being its first in California. According to KRON4, it will replace the popular souffle pancake spot Gram Cafe, which is closing after Aug. 27.

Within the past few years, Stonestown has become a food hub, bringing in popular international Asian restaurant chains such as Marugame Udon and Kura Revolving Sushi Ba

We have more restaurants to try, so Stonestown will continue to be a place for us to stop.

Upper Arlington High School Orchestras

On one of my visits to the Ala Moana Shopping Center last month, I stopped to listen to the Upper Arlington High School (Ohio) orchestras. Their intonation was good, they watched the conductor assiduously, and half the string players had decent vibrato.

After the second orchestra took the stage, I asked one parent (she was wearing one of the UAHS aloha shirts) whether there was any difference between the two. She said that both were equally talented, which is something I would say if I were in her place. It turned out that the first was a full orchestra with brass and woodwinds, while the second was all strings. For my money, the latter seemed more skilled but I'm biased because my instrument was the violin.

Both orchestras ended with a patriotic medley bookended by the usual standards America the Beautiful and the Star-Spangled Banner. When I was a kid (hey boomer), everyone stood when the national anthem was played, but on this day no one budged from the chairs. To be fair, most of the seated were elderly, and some looked like they could be foreign visitors. Nevertheless, in today's America accepted cultural understandings are exceedingly rare, as are excellent public high school orchestras.

Macy's on Union Square

After Macy's bought the I Magnin store (white building center left)
in 1994 it had the entire south side of Union Square (Chron photo)

Nearly a year ago the belief that San Francisco was in an inescapable doom loop became widespread. In seeming confirmation a month later Nordstrom, the anchor store of the San Francisco Centre, announced that it would close.

But subsequent events bred hope. In the fall the City banished homeless encampments near several major conventions and heavily patrolled the areas so that conventioneers wouldn't be victimized. Last week there were reports that tech employers were hiring again, and that some investors were buying at what they saw as the bottom of this real estate cycle.

However, trend lines never move smoothly in one direction. Today San Francisco received retail news that was worse than Nordstrom's departure.

Macy’s will close its massive flagship store in Union Square, San Francisco officials said Tuesday, a major setback to the city’s premier shopping district and its larger downtown recovery efforts during an election year.

The store will remain open until the company finds a buyer for the property, Mayor London Breed said in a statement Tuesday morning. The Chronicle has learned that the store will remain open until at least 2025...

Macy’s massive, 400,000-square-foot Union Square store — which spans nearly an entire block fronting Geary Street between Powell and Stockton streets — is the company’s last outpost in San Francisco. Macy’s presence in the city dates to 1947 and its store is a landmark on the south side of Union Square. Its loss marks one of the biggest retail closures the city has ever seen, on top of the loss of a nearby Nordstrom that had been open since 1988 and dozens of smaller retailers since the pandemic.

Union Square dates back to San Francisco's founding and is the unofficial heart of the City. Macy's is the dominant retailer of Union Square. If its building goes dark, it will deal a severe blow to Union Square and the revitalization of San Francisco.

Hanging Out at Ala Moana

Sign on the top floor above the stage

I made more visits to the Ala Moana Shopping Center than I usually do.

The first trip was for the purpose of making a tax payment at the City Hall Satellite Office; the second was to have dinner at one of the over-100(!) restaurants; the third was to pick up some knick-knacks to take home.

I get the appeal of hanging out at Ala Moana. I know some retirees whose daily routine is to walk and/or swim at Ala Moana beach park across the street, which has plenty of parking and isn't crowded on weekday mornings, then have lunch and chat with white-haired contemporaries at the shopping center.

Moderate exercise, sunshine, and socializing in person are a pleasant way to spend one's golden years, as well as add years to one's life. By the way, did you know that Hawaii is the state with the highest life expectancy?

City Hall Satellite Office

19 years ago it was just a small retail space tucked in the basement of Ala Moana Shopping Center. There was so little foot traffic that the City of Honolulu sold T-shirts, coffee mugs, and other tchotchkes to attract passersby.

Yesterday I had to make an in-person tax payment and walked by it, thinking it was a popular restaurant; there was a lady behind a maitre d' stand who appeared to be taking reservations. At the end of the sidewalk was Macy's, so I back-tracked and took another look.

The Honolulu City Hall Satellite Office has grown from its humble confines to a space equal to the major banks. In fact, it looks like a bank with eight (8) teller stations behind bullet proof glass.

After my business concluded efficiently, I asked the appointment lady where I could buy a City of Honolulu cap. Sorry, we don't sell those things any more. That's progress.

San Francisco is the Exception, But Not in a Good Way

Hillsdale Mall: kids, happy faces, greenery

The large Peninsula shopping malls (we've posted about San Mateo's Hillsdale, San Francisco's Stonestown, and San Jose's Valley Fair) all seem to have recovered their pre-COVID crowds....except for the San Francisco Centre, the poster child for San Francisco's "doom loop."

These days, the hushed retail center has few shoppers, and over half of the cavernous 1.5 million-square-foot complex is empty. Nordstrom’s departure in August was far from the only exit: There will be at least five closures in January alone — with Hollister, Aldo, Adidas, Madewell and J. Crew all shuttering by the end of this week. The high-end restaurants under its historic dome are all gone...

[Rachel Michelin, CEO of the California Retailers Association] believes that crime and public safety are San Francisco Centre’s key challenges. Retailers in the mall have told her that they feel frustrated about safety conditions...

Michelin believes that even if a new use is found for the mall, such as entertainment, continued challenges around public safety will persist and hurt future prospects if they aren’t addressed.

“You have to deal with the underlying (issues) — why these stores are closing in the first place,” she said, citing homelessness, drug use and safety.

Like thousands of others, I commuted every weekday into the City and took lunch breaks at the San Francisco Centre and Union Square. COVID put a stop to the commuting, and many office workers have not returned. The Financial District is a pale shell of its former self, and the homelessness, crime, and general filth have drastically reduced the number of tourists.

Lowered tourist and commuter foot traffic appears now to be a persistent phenomenon in downtown San Francisco. As for potential suburban customers, most of us will continue to flock to our own shopping centers that are just off the freeway, have ample free parking, and are much safer for the kids.

I do still hope that San Francisco pulls out of its "doom loop," but time is not on its side as businesses and high-income people continue to leave.

Slow News Day at the Chronicle

No point in doing an excerpt, here's the entire text, complete with what must be a stock photo (right):

San Francisco Fire Department officials said firefighters responded Tuesday to an electrical lighting outlet at the Westfield Mall on Market Street that was malfunctioning, throwing off sparks and smoke.

Firefighters arrived to the mall shortly before 8 a.m., Fire Department officials said.

The sparking outlet "was quickly mitigated thanks in part to the quick response of the San Francisco Fire Department and the collaboration with Westfield building staff," Fire Department officials said.

The mall was scheduled to open at its regularly scheduled time, and no one was injured.

The Westfield Centre is the poster child for San Francisco's "doom loop." Once it was on the list of top SF destinations. Then the mall's tenants, notably Nordstrom's, preferred to incur substantial financial penalties by cancelling leases and writing off their capital improvements rather than soldiering through. The landlord / owner stopped making its loan payments and turned the keys over to the lenders.

I suppose that it's a sign of improvement that this Westfield story was a smoking electric fire where no one was injured and little damage occurred (inferred from the mall's regular opening).

Minimal Marketing

When I'm going for food at the mall, I don't want to waste time figuring out the menu. For example, I might be craving sushi or ramen, but a restaurant with a Japanese name often offers one but not the other. At the Lanai food court at Ala Moana Center Kamakura Ramen tells you exactly what it serves.

I like the specificity of the names: Ahi and Vegetable, Musubi Cafe, YYK Dim Sum, and Mahaloha Burger. Yes, just show the dishes in the display along with the prices and don't bother with the florid descriptions.

Minimal marketing is greatly appreciated by those who are pressed for time.

Mystery Ducks

In the fountain by the Apple Store a mother duck and nine ducklings splashed merrily.

I wonder where they came from. The nearest body of water is Laurel Creek, a quarter-mile away.

The ducks would have had to traverse parking lots, busy streets, and a major shopping center.

While the ducklings have feathers, flying here would be hazardous. And the chance that they would settle in a man-made fountain seems remote.

Frankly, I wonder if they were placed there. Ducklings mature in 2-3 months, at which point this family should join the ducks and geese in the Bay marshlands four miles east. Yet ducks seem to show up regularly, else why go through the trouble of making a sign?

Their presence is a mystery.

Elemental Thoughts

Last Saturday's water shutdown in our neighborhood caused us to repair to the Hillsdale shopping center.

Unlike the emptying Westfield in San Francisco, Hillsdale is one of the Bay Area suburban malls that is experiencing growth and attracting investment.

The mall is safe enough that parents are comfortable bringing their children. (San Mateo County has a homeless population of about 1,000, and the City and County have improved security recently.) Disney set up a colorful display next to Macy's to advertise the new animated film Elemental.

The film on the whole has garnered moderately favorable reviews (WSJ: "marvelous imagery"; SF Chronicle: "absolutely gorgeous rendering of a half-baked idea").

Good special effects, plus a new, creative world of "elemental" tribes: that's enough to make me want to check it out on the Disney+ streaming service when it arrives, perhaps in September.

Postscript: I'm not sure I would have enjoyed the movie when I was a kid. I liked to keep reality, e.g., real science, separate from fantasy, e.g., cartoons and fairy tales. When I learned that Aristotle, one of the greatest Greek philosophers, declared the basic elements to be fire, air, water, and earth, this fourth grader thought that was pretty dumb. Today I would be kinder--some of the greatest fiction has been spun from premises that are entirely false.

Chased Away

At 10 a.m. yesterday the water pressure in the house dropped to zero. I looked out the window. A couple of utility trucks were in the street.

Presumably the interruption was going to be brief, else the workers would have knocked on the affected homes' doors and informed everyone. One could also infer from the absence of signs that the shut-off was unplanned.

After an hour with no water I walked across the street. The homeowner explained that his plumber had damaged the line to the neighborhood, and the City had to close the valve while contractors fixed the leak. Maybe another hour, he said.

Not wishing to wait around, especially if nature called, we left an hour early for the appointment at the Apple Store to fix an Apple Watch.

Any irritation I felt evaporated. I felt sorry for our neighbor, who may be on the hook for the street repair costs, not to mention a plumbing job gone wrong. I felt grateful to live in a City that could respond so quickly to a utilities emergency. And I appreciated living close to safe shopping malls, work-out clubs, and restaurants where we could pass the hours. When we got back in the afternoon the water was back on, and the men were still working in the street.

San Francisco is only 20 miles north, but it seems much farther away.

Slow to Build, Quick to Destroy

2003: Nordstrom's levels during the holiday season

20 years ago another building boom, fueled by tech, was about to start in San Francisco. (For historical perspective Google, 40 miles to the south, would have its IPO the following year and Apple's first iPhone would be released four years later.)

The San Francisco Centre, founded in 1988, reached its apex of development with the opening of high-end restaurants and stores, including Bloomingdale's. It looked like Market Street was on the verge of a long-awaited turnaround.

But the rot started later that decade with the refusal of the City to seriously address homelessness, drug use, and property crime. (Your humble blogger doesn't consider spending many millions of dollars while making no headway as being serious.)

This week Nordstrom's threw in the towel and is closing its flagship San Francisco store:

Nordstrom said downtown “changed dramatically over the past several years, impacting customer foot traffic to our stores and our ability to operate successfully,” without specifically citing public safety concerns in a staff memo.

Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, which owns the Westfield mall where Nordstrom is closing, was more blunt, with a spokesperson blaming the city for “unsafe conditions” and a “lack of enforcement against rampant criminal activity.”

I had been a cockeyed optimist but am coming to believe San Francisco's doom loop is irreversible.

There's Still Plenty of Dough in Silicon Valley

One-hundred-twenty-five dollars and 90 cents?
If it was $125 per pound I might have bought some.

After last year's opening crowds had checked out its price-to-value proposition, I wasn't optimistic about Eataly's long-term chances.

That is why I didn't go into marketing: nine months later it was still going strong.

On Sunday afternoon we ordered sandwiches, pizza slices, and desserts from the first-floor vendors and shopped for imported foodstuffs on the third floor.

All told, we got out of there having spent less than $200, and no, we didn't buy any Wagyu beef.

[Update - 10PM: Valley Fair in San Jose adds merchants, hits record sales and visits]

Westfield Valley Fair in San Jose has begun to attract visitors and retail activity at levels that top the big shopping mall’s activity even prior to the outbreak of the coronavirus.

After the opening of the popular Eataly Italian food hall, the retail complex is preparing for the opening of other high-profile merchants.

All the Time in the World

Market City is one of the larger neighborhood shopping centers on Oahu. A mile from the family home, it's your humble blogger's regular destination for supermarket shopping and picking up dinner.

The restaurants are busy, but rarely do the lines go out the door and never do they stretch 50 feet. The lady at the Korean barbecue said the new Kamitoku Hot Pot restaurant was charging $5 for a $15 meal. It was a "soft opening" pre-celebration of the "grand opening" in March.

Yelp reviewers already have cautioned that the wait for a table could be well over an hour. That didn't seem to deter the young-ish crowd that was happily chatting away, texting, and taking pictures.

I ordered take-out, bought a few items at Foodland, and returned to the car. After 30 minutes the line had barely moved. When you're young, you have all the time in the world.

The Day After Christmas

Left: during the week before Christmas the mall wasn't particularly busy. We did our shopping at the Apple Store and exited to the plaza. There was no one within 50 feet of the Christmas tree.

Right: On the day after Christmas the parking lots were filled. This time people milled around the Christmas tree taking selfies. The Apple Store required everyone to make an appointment.

We stopped by to make an exchange. The recipient of an iPad wanted more memory (he paid for the upgrade), and fortunately one was in inventory.

We went to restaurant row and bought a cheesecake. The Christmas task list was finally complete.

Tanforan Shopping Mall - Last Gasp

No spacing problem here.

In 2018 the decline of retail and the growing homelessness in San Bruno were warning signs for the Tanforan Mall.

The coronavirus lockdown was the death blow, and in November, 2020 the property was acquired by Alexandria Real Estate Equities for an eventual tear-down and conversion to a biotech campus / housing development.

But it would be a slow death, with designs and permits requiring years to process. Alexandria Real Estate Equities was in no hurry to buy out the leases, so tenants were running out their contracts.

In 2012 the Food Court bustled.

It was my first visit to the shopping center in four years. It was nearly empty. The once-bustling Food Court had a few diners, quietly picking at their food. Starbucks, Jollibee, and Burger King were already gone, while Chipotle, the movie theater, and Target were hanging on.

I ordered a teriyaki chicken lunch from Sarku, Japan, for old times sake. It was as good as I remembered but cost $3 more. Well, they have to make ends meet during the next year or two until construction begins.

The Tanforan Mall has been the site of a Peninsula race track, an internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II, and a shopping center. The recent 200-bp spike in interest rates and migration of people and business out of the Bay Area makes the biotech campus / residential housing plan by Alexandria Real Estate anything but a sure-fire moneymaker.

I wish them well.

Eataly, San Jose

In case you didn't know the cuisine that Eataly serves

Chronicle food writers have been effusive about Eataly, which just opened its ninth U.S. food hall in San Jose.

it’s Italian food heaven, and it’s finally here. The epic, three-story Italian food hall’s first Bay Area location opens at the Westfield Valley Fair mall in San Jose at 5 p.m. on June 16. If the yearslong anticipation is any indication, there will likely be throngs of people waiting in line.

With two restaurants, a cafe, gelato shop, bakery, butcher, seafood counter and market stocked with thousands of imported Italian goods, there is no other food hall like it in Northern California.

I happened to be in the area on Monday and had to check it out. Eataly spans three floors at the Valley Fair mall, and the "throngs" were such that foot traffic had to enter at the ground floor and all other access points were exit-only.

It looks empty but the next reservation was Friday

There was an hour wait for take-out, and the sit-down restaurants were completely booked. We're just here to shop at the market, we told the man at the entrance. We hurried up to the second floor, which was all wine:

Shelves stocked with over 1,200 wine labels stretch to the ceiling inside Eataly’s wine shop on the second floor. Everything is imported from Italy, from small-production sparkling wine to Lambrusco and a wide selection of Barolo.

(Chron photo)

Bottles range from $20 all the way up to $1,000 for rare wines stored in a temperature-controlled room. There’s also a small selection of liquors — grappa, amaro, limoncello — and local beers.

On the top floor was the market, a wondrous display of Italian comestibles. Fresh meats, produce, breads, pasta and cheese were either made on the premises, imported from Italy, or sourced locally.

We didn't buy anything; the local Whole Foods' selection is much more limited but is enough to satisfy our untutored palate.

It's problematic whether Eataly is going to make it in the long run. The buzz is enough to make it a shopping and dining destination for several years, but Bay Area shoppers are fickle.

Sony's Metreon Center opened to great fanfare, as did Union Square's FAO Schwarz, over 20 years ago.

Since those halycon retail days the Metreon has been sold and resold, while FAO Schwarz declared bankruptcy and closed its store.

Commercial space, already costly in the Bay Area, is very expensive when companies like Sony, FAO Schwarz, and Eataly customize their spaces to attract upscale crowds.

The trick is having them come back over and over to buy their expensive wares.

We won't be in that group but do wish them well.