With the big tree-lighting ceremony in Union Square this week, the pall hanging over the celebration is the impending planned closure of Macy's, with this potentially being the last Great Tree lighting in the square, at least by Macy's.

"They're inviting you in to shop shop shop until you drop drop drop," cried Mayor London Breed during a speech at the tree lighting on Wednesday night. But, as ABC 7 asks, is Macy's going to change their minds about closing their enormous Union Square store and selling the property if everybody just shops enough this season?

To everyone's shock, Macy's announced the planned closure back in February, and we've heard little from City Hall about any changes in those plans since. Looking toward her reelection bid, Breed tried to get out in front of the story in the ensuing days after the announcement, saying "something could happen between now and then" regarding Macy's broad plan to close 150 stores over several years.

The Union Square store was not among the initial group of around 50 stores which were slated for closure in 2024, and it seems likely Macy's will stay open until they find a buyer for the multiple properties that constitute the store, stretching from Geary Street on one side to O'Farrell on the other, and occupying a large chunk of the block.

While major department stores like Macy's may not be a thing anymore, in terms of shopping trends, Macy's locations in the suburbs have tended to be doing brisker business according to retail experts, than big stores in the middle of cities. That may be in part because stores like Macy's proliferated closer to where their shoppers lived, as opposed to in city centers where they originated, and where people used to have to travel to shop. And now that people buy things online more and more, the reasons for shoppers to come into the city have changed.

Still, Marisa Rodriguez of the Union Square Alliance expressed some hope, telling ABC 7, "I think anything is possible, it will be on my Santa wish list to ensure that Macy's stays so we'll see."

And a store manager at the Union Square Macy's tells the station, "We don't know what the future holds but we're hopeful that we'll be here for many years to come."

Bringing Union Square and downtown back to life will be very much on the agenda of incoming Mayor Daniel Lurie, just as they were for Breed over the past year. But there's only so much a mayor can do to stimulate retail activity.

And will Lurie even know all of the levers he has to pull as a mayor when it comes to retail revitalization? He spent nearly $9 million of his own money to get elected, could he just throw some money at the problem? And while he's at it, maybe save the Fillmore Safeway or get another store to open serving the low-income population there right quick?

Mission Local has a contribution today to the deluge of post-election analysis, with the headline "Money can't buy you competence." And that would seem to implicate Lurie, who has little in the way of political or even real-world job experience coming into the job of mayor. But writer Joe Eskenazi is actually taking more pointed aim at Together SF, as he has in recent weeks, saying, "It is hard to overstate how badly big-spending political pressure group TogetherSF, its precious ballot measure Prop D and its preferred candidate Mark Farrell underperformed."

Eskenazi also discusses the mixed bag of results for Together SF and the similarly aligned Grow SF in trying to clear out the progressive regime on the SF Board of Supervisors. They got Dean Preston out, or the voters did, with help from $378,000 from Grow SF to the "Dump Dean" campaign. But they were also pushing voters to dump Connie Chan in District 1, and that didn't happen.

More moderate candidates that were floated for Districts 7, 9, 11 also did not fare that well — with District 11 still too close to call, but progressive labor organizer Chyanne Chen maintains a small lead after over a week of counting.

Together SF and Grow SF's wins, then, amount to getting Bilal Mahmood and Danny Sauter elected to Districts 5 and 3, and it's hard to say whether that wouldn't have happened without all their money spent.

Could Together SF pay Macy's to stay, instead of spending money on another 'That's Fentalife!' campaign? Everyone would probably enjoy that a lot more.