San Francisco’s downtown region saw the recent exodus of numerous retail entities, including the Westfield- owned San Francisco Centre mall after the departure of Nordstrom, but a glimmer of hope may be on the horizon thanks to Ingka Centres’ development plans in the city’s Mid-Market neighborhood. Ingka Centres, the Netherlands-based mall-management sister company to IKEA, purchased a six-story 256,000-s.f. glass building in the struggling neighborhood back in 2020 in order to create a new entertainment-themed mall, tentatively titled Meeting Place.
Meeting Place’s first tenant was the three-level 52,000-s.f. IKEA store that opened in August, which includes two new in-store food concepts: Swedish Deli, which serves the famous IKEA Swedish meatballs and Swedish Bite, a street-level shop that sells pre-packaged refrigerated meals. The next tenant to open will be the 46,470-s.f. co-working concept, called Hej!Workshop, which will entail Ingka Centres partnering with Industrious. Hej!Workshop will open on the top floor of the mall by early 2024, and will act as a showroom featuring IKEA’s office furniture.
By spring of 2024, a two-story 23,000-s.f. fully organic Scandinavian food hall, called Saluhall, will also open, featuring multiple local street-food vendors, as well as European food merchants. Up to 80% of the vendors are expected to be plant based. The food hall will include three bars that will sell local craft wine and beer, as well as a bakery cafe and cooking school that are both being developed by the renowned Danish Michelin star chef Claus Meyer.
As for future Meeting Place tenants, Ingka Centres indicated that it is seeking out additional restaurants and entertainment concepts, and may consider service-oriented tenants as well, including educational or healthcare brands. A residential element is also being considered. Puttery was rumored to have expressed interest in the mall space.
Additional U.S. markets being eyed for future Meeting Place mall concepts include the inner-city areas of Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, as all have a high-density population and potentially favorable real estate deals. As for future IKEA store growth, the retailer announced up to 17 new stores, many in Southern markets. Nine of these upcoming stores will be the new format “Plan and Order” concepts that will fill smaller 4,500- to 9,000-s.f. spaces in malls or retail street fronts and will focus more on personalized home design planning with in-store ordering and pickup services.
