An unlikely tenant is stepping forward to move into the Union Square cable car turnaround’s vacant One Powell Street storefront — the very AT&T store that moved out of that storefront two and a half years ago.
It barely registered as a blip when AT&T announced it was closing its flagship retail store at One Powell Street in the summer of 2023, considering the announcement came just one day after the dying Westfield Centre Mall’s Cinemark cinema complex had just closed out of the blue, and retailers like T-Mobile and Old Navy were already dropping like flies from the Union Square retail landscape. And then just a few months later, the Union Square Macy’s closure announcement pretty much knocked all other retail closure news out of the headlines.
But now, a full two-and-a-half years after that AT&T store closure announcement, the SF Business Times has the rather surprising news that AT&T is returning to the very One Powell Street storefront they left in 2023. And that news comes directly from AT&T director of external affairs Cammy Blackstone, who declared at an SF Chamber of Commerce event last week that AT&T was "reopening our store in Union Square."
"San Francisco still has challenges. We know that — economic uncertainty, downtown recovery, workforce transitions and the broader question of what our city will become next," Blackstone said at the event. "But the bright spots are real. And that optimism we're all feeling, it's legit. Companies are moving back to the city."
The SF Business Times was unable to get a confirmation on reopening date. AT&T currently has ten other retail locations in San Francisco.
But it’s something of a novelty that one of the SF retail stores that bolted during the “doom loop” narrative era is not just reopening, but reopening at the exact same address at which it has previously closed. And there is certainly wind at the back of Union Square’s sails, with the recent openings of the Nintendo Store, Pop Mart of Labubu fame, plus Michael Mina’s Bourbon Steak and Steph Curry collab the Eighth Rule.
And as a funny reminder about that One Powell Street location that is going to be an AT&T Store again, we will point out that up until 2016, that place was a Forever 21.
Image: Google Street View
