AT&T flagship store in San Francisco’s Union Square shutting down for good

In another blow to the shopping scene in downtown San Francisco, the AT&T flagship location in the city’s Union Square announced Thursday it will be closing its doors on Aug. 1.

The announcement came just a day after Cinemark shuttered its movie theater at the Westfield mall, whose owners said Monday they would be giving control of the complex to undisclosed lenders.

The Union Square AT&T store has fewer than 20 employees, who will each be offered jobs at one of the other 11 AT&T locations in San Francisco. Two of those locations are within a mile of the closed flagship store.

AT&T says that changing consumer habits were the impetus for the closure.

“Consumer shopping habits continue to change. … That means serving customers where they are through the right mix of retail stores, digital channels and our phone-based care team,” AT&T spokesperson Chris Collins told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Retail near Union Square, however, continues to take a beating. At the Westfield mall, Banana Republic left in May and Nordstrom is slated to leave later this summer.

With the AT&T flagship leaving, the area has lost at least 25 retail locations since 2020, according to the San Francisco Standard. 

The departed stores ranged from the chic to the every day, including H&M, Disney, Crate & Barrel, The Container Store, Office Depot, Amazon Go, Anthropologie, Saks Off 5th, Old Navy, and Abercrombie & Fitch, among others.

A Whole Foods store in the Trinity area of downtown San Francisco closed its doors in April over employee safety concerns, having dealt with a bevy of medical crises, assaults and even overdoses in the store’s bathrooms.

Elsewhere in San Francisco, the city put up metal event fencing outside a McDonald’s on Mission Street, as part of an ongoing back-and-forth with illegal vendors and homeless people, who the city is trying to stop from congregating outside stores or a nearby Bay Area Rapid Transit station.