San Francisco's Flagship Mall on Market at Fire-Sale Price

San Francisco's tech rebound is getting a conspicuous reality check in the form of a boarded-up, 1.5-million-square-foot mall at its core. The Wall Street Journal reports that San Francisco Centre—once a "trophy" shopping destination with Nordstrom, Bloomingdale's, and sky-high sales per square foot—is back on the market after a planned $130 million sale collapsed in July. That price would mark a staggering fall from its roughly $1.2 billion valuation a decade ago, and brokers don't expect it to fetch more than that now.

Reporters Kate King and Jim Carlton note that the hulking, nine-level complex is mostly empty, expensive to maintain, and entangled in a knot of owners and ground leases that helped scare off the last buyers. City officials and analysts assume it will be transformed into something other than a traditional mall—one local developer is floating a sports complex anchored by an NBA assistant coach's training program—but the dealmaking is complicated and time-sensitive. Read the full story. The San Francisco Standard has more details on the "sorta crazy plan" to turn the site into a sports complex.