Nordstrom. Old Navy. Anthropologie. H&M. Crate & Barrel.San Francisco’s downtown has seen a mass exodus of retailers in recent months, and this week a mall owner has decided to walk away from a prominent property. Perhaps more troubling, market analysts say the city still has a ways to go before the hemorrhaging stops.The city has the highest office vacancy rate of any large American city. Asking rents for retail spaces have dropped 21 percent since before the pandemic. And even as tourists are visiting San Francisco again, the amount of money they spend in the city is 77 percent less than it was in 2019.“I don’t think we’re in the upswing yet for San Francisco,” said Vince Tibone, managing director at the real estate firm Green Street. “I would say we probably haven’t even reached bottom yet.”On Monday, the mall owner Westfield said it was handing Westfield San Francisco Centre back to its lender, who will decide who will operate the property going forward.Westfield’s decision to walk away from the location it has owned since 2002 raised a new round of questions about how l …
