Small Business & Regulation

San Francisco's last major downtown mall is now evicting its final three tenants—a bar, shoe repair shop, and salon—marking the complete collapse of what was once the city's biggest shopping center. While the San Francisco Chronicle blames remote work and the pandemic, critics argue the real culprit was rampant shoplifting and open drug dealing that made the Powell Street area unsafe for shoppers, pointing to thriving malls in other Bay Area locations as evidence that e-commerce alone didn't kill retail.