Yes, let's keep ignoring the issues and point to something else, that will solve it! Not saying it's not part of it but let's not pretend downtown SF is a utopia.
Nordstrom closed its Jeffrey boutiques in Palo Alto, and its store in Escondido (among many others). So, presumably the homeless and crime problems there caused that?
And Westfield can complain about crime in SF but they're just trying to cough up an excuse. UWR completely ejected from ALL their US Westfield malls in 2022 while keeping all their EU malls. Somehow the EU homeless and crime problems aren't an issue but the US ones are. Interesting that.
SF certainly has its issues. However, in this instance, they are completely orthogonal to the reasons why Nordstrom is closing.
The structural changes in the way people shop were bad even before Covid, but the work-from-home contingent fleeing the city (SF has almost 30% working from home--the highest in the nation by the way--and it would probably be larger except many of them left SF) really accelerated the transition.
