By Dean Maddox, Public Safety & Crime Reporter

San Francisco’s downtown mall — the 1.5 million–square–foot San Francisco Centre — is on life support, and everybody knows it. The Chronicle says it plain: Nordstrom bailed in 2023, Bloomingdale’s is gone, Westfield and Brookfield tossed the keys back to the bank, and now the whole thing is up for auction again. Security guards outnumber shoppers, most of the food court is closed, and the only thing keeping Shoe Wiz alive is one old man too broke to move his shop. That ain’t revival — that’s hospice.

But here’s the part nobody in city hall wants to say: this isn’t some mystery economic storm. San Francisco Centre died because the city killed it.

First came the COVID shutdowns. The city went harder than most — boarded up, taped off, masked to hell, and bragged about it. While other states got back on their feet, downtown SF never did. Tourism collapsed, office workers never came back, and the mall bled out in real time.

Then came the homeless free–for–all. The city hands out millions of free needles every year through its Department of Public Health. They bought up hotels to house addicts during COVID — many got trashed and turned into shooting galleries. Their so-called “Navigation Centers” feed, clothe, and supply folks but don’t require sobriety. The result? Encampments a block away from the mall, and homeless wandering inside. Tenants told the Chronicle they were dealing with shoplifting and violent incidents from the homeless right in the mall itself. American Eagle even sued Westfield over crime and safety problems before shutting down their store.

Pile on the BLM/defund wave. The city council jumped on that train in 2020, cheering on anti-cop politics. Cops got pulled back, morale tanked, response times dragged, and thieves figured out they could clean stores out with little more than a trash bag and a grin. By the time city leaders tried to walk it back, the damage was already done.

So here we are. A downtown mall that used to be packed on all five floors now looks like a mausoleum, while some consultant dreams about turning it into condos, a hotel, or maybe even a soccer stadium. Good luck finding the money for that in a city where building costs are sky-high and tax revenue is drying up.

Truth is, no sane person wants to risk a day shopping or working downtown if it means smashed car windows, junkies nodding off on the escalators, and cops told to treat criminals like they’re victims. The mall’s dead because San Francisco made damn sure it would be.

No shit.