San Francisco’s decline had already transitioned from a gradual to a sudden phase.
That descent is now accelerating.
Whole Foods is closing their flagship San Francisco store on Monday at the end of business hours.Whole Foods told KTVU that the store on Market Street at 8th is shutting down for the time being because of employee safety concerns. A city supervisor calls the closure temporary.”To ensure the safety of our Team Members, we have made the difficult decision to close the Trinity store for the time being,” a spokesperson for Whole Foods wrote in a statement.
No details on the exact nature of the safety concerns were offered. But one might be able to take a reasonable guess.
A City Hall source told The Standard the company cited deteriorating street conditions around drug use and crime near the grocery store as a reason for its closure.Since the start of the pandemic, Downtown has suffered a massive loss in foot traffic due to remote work. Many small businesses have shuttered, while examples of extreme poverty and mental illness on the street have become more apparent.Fears of a “doom loop” in which a cascade of negative financial impacts compound have spread across the city, and City Hall officials currently expect a nearly $800 million deficit in San Francisco’s budget.
One of the City Supervisors is using this event to get a measure on the ballot re-establishing minimum police staffing levels.
Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who lives in the neighborhood and frequented the store, said he’d seen signs that the Whole Foods was struggling. As a near-daily customer, he said, the store had gotten rid of handheld shopping baskets, allowing only carts. An employee told Dorsey that all 250 baskets the store had when it first opened were stolen — something Dorsey said he saw evidence of during neighborhood cleanups on nearby Natoma and Minna streets. Staff also reportedly complained about “people acting out” inside the store, he said.“It’s obvious to me that, as an employer, Whole Foods has a lot of concerns about the safety of their employees, and ultimately that’s why they made the decision to close,” Dorsey said. “I wish they hadn’t, but I’ve also been in there and seen some things that are off-putting.”Dorsey seized on the store closure to announce Monday that he wants voters to decide on a ballot measure next year that would re-establish minimum staffing levels for the San Francisco Police Department and set a goal of reaching it in the next five years. Dorsey, a former SFPD spokesman, said he had asked City Attorney David Chiu in late March for help in drafting the language of the potential measure, which could appear on the ballot in March 2024.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY