A nearly 50-foot tall statue of a naked woman towering over Union Square, a new retailer opening in a big, vacant storefront on a corner facing the plaza and 200 days of free activities in the park: These are some of what’s coming in 2025 to enliven San Francisco’s historic shopping district that has been so hard-hit by store closures and property vacancies in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’re beginning to show improvement. I really do think this,” said Jon Handlery, president and CEO of Handlery Hotels, who said he was encouraged by the promise of more tourists with a robust Moscone Center convention schedule compared with 2024.
as well as at Chase Center hosting the NBA All-Star Game in February and the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament in March. Handlery owns a historic eight-story building at Geary and Powell streets, where a new retailer is preparing to open for business in a large street-corner space that the Express clothing chain vacated in late 2023. He would not identify his new tenant, but said a multiyear lease for the 13,000-square-foot space had been signed.
Across Geary Street, meanwhile, Handlery and others are expecting that soon a Nintendo of America store will open in a corner spot in the Westin St. Francis Hotel. “So now we’ll have two corners, two new tenants to bring new life to Union Square,” he said.
Exactly when the Redmond, Wash.-based video-gaming company will welcome customers remains a mystery, though workers ha.
