The Old Navy flagship store in downtown San Francisco will close its Market Street location on July 1, a company spokesman said Friday.
Old Navy has leased the 801 Market St. location since 1997 and hosted a grand opening of the store in 1999. A spokesman for Old Navy’s parent company, San Francisco-based Gap Inc., said the way the company “exploits” its flagship locations has changed.
“We have made the difficult decision to close our Market Street store after the lease expires, and we are already working to find new locations in downtown San Francisco that better serve the needs of the business and our customers,” said the speaker.
The lease for the store is expected to expire on July 31. With the closure of the 73,000-square-foot location, the only remaining Old Navy in San Francisco is a small location in what Gap Inc. calls the Laboratory Rooms — which includes the Gap colleagues. Athleta, Gap and Banana Republic brands.
However, these experimental stores are not located in high-traffic retail corridors, but rather in office spaces that the company already owns.
Walgreens at 825 Market St. | Garrett Leahy/The Standard
The Old Navy is on the same block as Walgreens where Banko Brown was shot by a security guard on April 27th.
Also on this block is the Westfield San Francisco Center, where Nordstrom announced earlier this month that it would be closing its department store this summer. The company is also closing the Nordstrom Rack across from the mall across Fifth Street, attributing both closures to “market dynamics in downtown San Francisco.” A few blocks away, the Whole Foods flagship store on Market Street and Eighth Street announced its closure in April due to staff safety concerns.
Gap Inc. has reduced staff
Gap Inc., whose stock price is down more than 25% year-to-date, has closed a number of San Francisco stores in recent years, dwindling its presence in its hometown.
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The company was in the midst of a nationwide downsizing that included announcing it would lay off about 1,800 company employees in April. The company is looking for a CEO after its former CEO Sonia Syngal resigned last July.
In 2020, the company closed its Gap flagship store on Powell and Market streets, near the Old Navy location, as well as the Gap stores at the Embarcadero Center and the Stonestown Galleria.
Banana Republic, another Gap affiliate, has closed its downtown location at 152 Geary St. as part of an alleged move to a smaller flagship store at 152 Geary St. However, this location has not yet opened.
CONTINUE READING: Almost half of Union Square’s businesses have closed since 2019
The Old Navy’s flagship is one of many great storefronts fleeing downtown San Francisco. Almost half of Union Square’s stores have closed since 2019, although several new stores have opened in the neighborhood in recent months.
And upscale home furnishing retailer Coco Republic announced May 10 that it was abandoning its three-story storefront at 55 Stockton St., which opened just last fall.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the Banana Republic was located on Grant Ave. closed is.
